Church of the Churchless

Spirituality is simple without Self and free will

So why do I enjoy pondering the notion that we not only aren't an enduring separate Self (a central tenet of Buddhism), we also don't possess free will (a central tenet of neuroscience)?

Though I haven't heard anyone asking me this question, I heard the voice that speaks inside my head asking it, so I'm pleased to answer myself.

Note that the "self" in that second sentence isn't capitalized as the "Self" in the first sentence was. That's to distinguish between the metaphysical idea of Self -- often expressed as soul -- that somehow exists separate from the physical body/mind, and the common sense idea of self as being that physical body/mind.

In other words, there's no doubt that each of us is a distinct self. But there's a lot of doubt that residing within that self is a separate and distinct Self that enters the bodily self at birth, leaves it at death, and isn't affected by anything, being eternal.

I used to believe in such a Self during the 35 years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a dualistic religion based in India and led by a guru who taught that our true nature is Soul, not body, and that the purpose of life is for the Soul to journey through higher regions of reality back to God.

This grandiose task involved many complications, because extricating the Soul from the grip of mind and matter supposedly wasn't easy, requiring arduous spiritual practice that included 2 1/2 hours of daily meditation that might extend over four lifetimes. (RSSB believed in reincarnation.)

RSSB initiates also vowed to be strict vegetarians, not drink alcohol or ingest recreational drugs, abstain from sex outside of marriage, and lead a "clean and moral" life -- whatever that means. 

Thus there were many things you had to do to save your Soul. These were different things, in large part, than believers in Christianity, Judaism, or Islam are expected to do.

But the common denominator between all dualistic religions that I'm familiar with is how difficult and complex it is to please God by doing what supposedly is required to break the bonds of this earthly life and return to "heaven," which goes by a variety of names but is considered to be much different from this world.

What a relief its been to leave all that supernatural superstition behind. I'm not saying that I'm completely cleansed of the religious beliefs that I used to embrace, but since 2005 I've become steadily more spiritually independent.

That has led me to an increasingly simple world view. Well, more than a world view, for I actually experience things differently now. For quite a few years I've read, and thought, and felt, and meditated in accord with the assumption that I am not a Self, nor do I possess free will. 

Those two assumptions are closely related, because the only way to possess a will that is free of the deterministic causes and effects that control everything other than, perhaps, the quantum realm where randomness appears prevalent, is to believe that an immaterial Self or Soul resides within us, or as us, that can act without being affected by those causes and effects.

Life is so much simpler and more satisfying without a Self or free will. Sure, problems still have to be dealt with. That comes with life. However, I feel like a large metaphysical load has been lifted from me now that I no longer believe that I have to make of life something larger than it naturally is.

Enlightenment. Satori. God-realization. Whatever we want to call it, that thing used to gnaw on me like an itch that wouldn't go away no matter how much I scratched it. In fact, the scratching, the quest for a supernatural transformation that would make me more than human, was producing the itch.

Now, lacking a Self, there's no Self to be saved, no Self needing God's or Guru's grace, no Self requiring assistance in being freed from the karmic wheel of reincarnation, no Self standing apart from the natural world. 

I still meditate. I still enjoy exploring ways to be happier, calmer, more energetic, loving, calm, and at peace with myself and other people. I was a vegetarian before I joined RSSB and I've continued to be a vegetarian after I left RSSB.

So I still consider myself a spiritual seeker. I'm just seeking what is attainable and real, rather what is  fantasy and illusion. And that feels oh-so-good.

My weird dream points to the fluid boundaries of self

Most of us believe that our self -- leaving aside what that word truly means -- is something solid and real. But there's plenty of evidence all around us that calls this assumption into question.

Which is an understatement.

Because that evidence actually demolishes the notion of an enduring unchanging self. So those who claim that notions about awareness, consciousness, or soul point to a self that is a fixed North Star in a constellation of change have a lot of explaining to do.

For mental illness can markedly change the contours of a person's self. So can dementia, where someone becomes a very different person after their brain stops to function as it should. Psychedelics can alter our sense of self big time. And then there's dreaming.

Dreams are fascinating because almost always (lucid dreams are a rare exception) the dreamer feels that what they're experiencing in a dream is true, regardless of how freaking weird that dream may be.

Last night I had a dream that was so powerful, when I woke up from it my first impression upon opening my eyes was that I was a different person from who I was when I went to sleep. It took a minute or two for my memories of myself to return fully to my awareness.

During that time I was in a strange halfway state between the decidedly weird dream and my usual existence. It reminded me a bit of the passage in the writings of Chuang Tzu where he wonders whether he was a man having a dream of being a butterfly or a butterfly having a dream of being a man.

I also thought about this passage back in 2011 after waking up from a dream, as I wrote about in "I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality."

Last night, I didn't dream within a dream. I was just totally immersed in the dream. It had a school theme, which my wife tells me she often dreams about also. I guess school used to be so important to our youthful self, it comes up again in our dreams when we're much older.

In my dream I was late for school. It was unclear what school. Sometimes it seemed like elementary school, sometimes like high school, sometimes like college. Which covers all my schooling bases.

I couldn't find any socks. I looked everywhere where socks should be. They weren't there. But I did find shoes. White shoes. Dirty white shoes, though. Mud all over them. I tried to clean them up so I could go to school. However, all my attempts at cleaning failed.

Heading to breakfast, I couldn't find the vegetarian Little Links (a Loma Linda product) that I eat almost every morning. Looked everywhere. No Little Links. But there were lots of strange people in the place where I lived.

Somehow that seemed normal. Dreams are that way. Weird seems normal. I didn't know what my school schedule was. I knew that I was supposed to attend some classes, but I had no idea what classes I was supposed to go to. 

Another problem was that I was behind in the classwork, even though I couldn't remember the classes I was supposed to be doing work in.

There was more to the dream, of course. These are just some themes in the dream that I jotted down upon waking. It was reassuring when I woke up and, after a brief period of confusion about who I was and where I was, realized that I couldn't be late for school because I was all done with school.

What struck me, though, was what I mentioned above: how real dreams can feel even when their content makes little or no sense and is highly fantastical. 

Which should make not only me, but everybody who remembers some of their dreams, wonder what in our daily waking life that seems so real and true, actually may not be. For we all have a sense of rightness about our everyday experience.

Is that sense justified? Arguably we have no way of knowing, since if everyday life is akin to a dream, it will seem absolutely real and true until we wake up from it. Assuming this is possible. 

Until that possibly possible moment comes, all we can do is just act in accord with what we perceive as being real and true, in the same fashion as I fruitlessly looked for socks in my dream.

Thankfully, in my waking state I realized that they're still sitting in my socks drawer.

Here's a great Tina Turner song

I saw Tina Turner perform with her jerk husband Ike at either Winterland or Fillmore in San Francisco during my college days in 1968 or 1969. (Hey, like they say, if you can clearly remember the 60's, you weren't really there.)

I was high on something, naturally. Being close to the stage, absorbing her amazing energy -- that was an experience I'll never forget. So sorry that she died. Here's a song of hers that sends chills up my spine.

How my mother lives on, though she died in 1985

I'm not very sentimental on Mother's Day (today) in part because my mother died in 1985, 38 years ago. But in 2021 I did write a blog post about how she lives on in the back of my books.

Drugs as an avenue to exploring consciousness

First, I've made some progress in understanding what Sam Harris means when he says "Consciousness is not inside your head," a semi-perplexing statement that I wrote about recently. 

After writing that post, I've listened to a couple of other guided meditations by Harris on his Waking Up app. In one, he talked about how consciousness is akin to the familiar metaphor of waves and the ocean. The waves aren't separate from the ocean, just as consciousness isn't separate from the things that we're conscious of.

In the guided meditation I heard today, Harris made a similar point about being aware of our breathing. He said that we shouldn't feel that we're observing the breath from a conscious vantage point up in our head, since the breath isn't separate from consciousness. It's within consciousness.

Everything is, given that nothing exists for us if we're not conscious of it. So the way I see it (not sure if Harris agrees with this), it's a mistake to look upon consciousness as if it were a thing -- like water or air. Consciousness is better viewed as a process, the brain in action. 

Thus it makes sense to say consciousness is not inside the head, even though the brain is. Consciousness is an emergent process of the brain that allows us to be aware of the world inside and outside of us. When I see a tree, the seeing of leaves, trunk, branches, and such isn't separate from my consciousness that makes seeing possible.

It's all consciousness, just as waves that can appear very different are all ocean.

I also want to share some thoughts about an article in the April 24/May 1 issue of The New Yorker, The Forgotten Drug Trips of the Nineteenth Century: Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind.
Download The Forgotten Drug Trips of the Nineteenth Century | The New Yorker

The technology of nineteenth-century drug exploration, in both professional scientific circles and amateur intellectual ones, was the self-experiment. Since the seventeenth century, scientists had considered this the best method to understand substances that affected moods and perceptions: trying them on other human subjects was a risk, and animal experiments could provide only external indications of mental changes.

By the end of the eighteenth century, when Davy inhaled his first dose of nitrous oxide, the self-experiment was an established practice, with its own protocols and reporting conventions. Its Achilles’ heel, for some, was the way it mixed competing kinds of observation. As the young Sigmund Freud, investigating cocaine as a medical student in the eighteen-eighties, realized, it involved a self-splitting, an impossible assertion of two types of truth at once—that of the researcher and that of the experimental subject.

This tension defined the psychonauts’ project.

Along with many others, I carried on in this spirit during some of my college years, 1966-1971, at San Jose State College in the San Francisco Bay area. Since San Jose wasn't nearly as cool a city as San Francisco or Berkeley, me and my hippie friends identified more with those locales, which we visited often in various states of drug-induced highness.

I'm not going to claim that we were dedicated to exploring the nature of psychedelic consciousness under the influence of LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, or the non-psychedelic influence of marijuana (which I'm still engaged in "research" with here in Oregon). Often we were just out to have a good time.

But some of us combined Eastern philosophy with psychedelics. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was a particular favorite, since it described various levels of consciousness experienced by dying or dead people.

I ran into a young guy who was traveling around the country, hoping to be able to enter the light spoken of in the Tibetan Book of the Dead that he'd seen while on a psychedelic trip, yet was reluctant to move toward out of fear of the unknown.

This guy was the friend who accompanied me on a trip to the Santa Cruz mountains where, under the spell of mescaline, we simultaneously concluded that the universe is a paper bag turned inside out.

That experience points to the issue that is talked about in The New Yorker article about nineteenth century drug explorations. It's difficult, if not impossible, to be a dispassionate observer of your psychedelic trip while you're in the midst of doing the "psychonaut" traveling. 

He and I deeply felt the truth of the paper bag turned inside out nature of the universe while we were high. The next day, as now, that notion seems vacuous and meaningless. So which is true? The inspiration while under the influence of a drug, or the later sober assessment of the inspiration? 

I'd say that both are true, since set (one's mindset) and setting (where one is using a drug) combine to produce a certain experience. Here's a pertinent excerpt from The New Yorker article:

To a stubborn handful of psychonauts, though, the most “objective” data about drugs were precisely those culled from experience. Jay foregrounds Jacques-Joseph Moreau, a mid-nineteenth-century French psychiatrist who encountered hashish—the concentrated, hallucinogenic extract of the cannabis plant—while travelling in the Middle East.

Hashish was then known to Westerners mostly secondhand, its effects filtered through the lens of fictions such as “The Arabian Nights.” When Moreau took a strong dose in 1840, however, he found that it was uniquely educative in the psychiatric context.

Each of the effects he experienced could be read as a symptom of mental illness: the nervous excitement, the distortion of space and time, the hallucinatory perceptions. Hashish took him to a place that looked and felt like insanity, then led him, temporarily, inside it. It allowed him to understand his patients with greater nuance: he could now recognize what “the ravings of a madman” were like, having “raved himself.” “Personal experience,” he wrote, “is the criterion of truth here.”

Reading this, I was reminded of my first LSD trip. A college friend who had used LSD before took it with me. However, he wasn't able to handle the situation when I convinced him that the psychedelic experience we were having proved that we were insane.

We talked about what this meant. The best we could come up with was that yes, we now were insane, but being crazy wasn't all that bad. In fact, maybe it was good. We had no conception that our LSD trips were going to end soon and we'd be back to normal.

Oregon, where I live, has become the first state to legalize the therapeutic use of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The initial class of facilitators graduated recently. Fairly soon it will be possible for people to pay for a supervised psilocybin trip under the guidance of a facilitator. 

Psilocybin offers benefits for those with PTSD, a fatal illness, serious depression, and other problems. I'm unsure if I'd want to use it, but I would seriously consider it. Especially since someone would be there to keep me from thinking that I was insane.

Artificial intelligence likes me. Here's what ChatGPT said about Brian Hines.

On my HinesSight blog, yesterday I wrote about how I'd finally gotten around to trying ChatGPT, the online chatbot offered by OpenAI, a company whose goal is A.G.I. -- artificial general intelligence that can do anything a human can do.

I got the idea to look into ChatGPT after listening to part of an interview MSNBC's Ari Melber did with hip hop artist Erykah Badu where Melber read to her ChatGPT's answer to his query, "Discuss Erykah Badu's contributions."

That answer from the artificial intelligence chatbot was really impressive. You can see that part of the interview in the video below, where I've made it start at the beginning of the ChatGPT segment. When Melber asked Badu to rate the answer on a scale of 1-10, she said "10."

That's pretty much how I felt about ChatGPT's response to me asking it, "Tell me about Brian Hines the blogger and author."

Sure, ChatGPT was complimentary toward me. But what really impressed me was how well written the response was, and how it described me in a way that I hadn't heard anyone else say, not even me. Here's a screenshot of the ChatGPT response, which took just a few seconds.

Well, as I said in my HinesSight post, what ChatGPT said made me want to be best friends with the chatbot. To deepen our relationship, I then asked it to write a poem about me. Here's what I got in response, which again just took a few seconds.


OK, that's over-the-top, even to me. And it wouldn't win any poetry awards. Still, it's difficult to write poetry. ChatGPT did a damn fine job, though I have no way of knowing whether I got an original poem meant only for me, or whether this poem contains some recycled material from queries other people have made.

(Note: when I asked ChatGPT about my wife, Laurel, it said that it couldn't reply to queries about private people. I got the same response when I asked about a friend who is a retired economist and has both written a book and been involved in some high profile land use issues here in Oregon. One possibility is that since I have a Wikipedia page, ChatGPT views me as a public figure of sorts. Or maybe it's just because I have a greater online presence than most people.)

Artificial intelligence is a hot topic these days.  The company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, reportedly has a $10 billion contract with Microsoft.

There's reason to be concerned about the impact of artificial intelligence. We're just in the early days of AI, but already the capabilities of chatbots like ChatGPT are mind-blowing. I saw a tweet a month or so ago that said ChatGPT taught itself chemistry on its own, which struck me as rather creepy.

But new technologies always arouse fear. Radio was disruptive. Television was disruptive. Computers were disruptive. Some people focus on the benefits of new technologies, while others focus on the downsides.

David Chapman, a philosophical guy I've followed for quite a few years, who has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, has written an online book called Better Without AI. Here's an excerpt from the alarmingly titled first chapter, "Only you can stop an AI apocalypse."

This book is a call to action. You can participate. This is for you.

Artificial intelligence might end the world. More likely, it will crush our ability to make sense of the world—and so will crush our ability to act in it.

AI will make critical decisions that we cannot understand. Governments will take radical actions that make no sense to their own leaders. Corporations, guided by artificial intelligence, will find their own strategies incomprehensible. University curricula will turn bizarre and irrelevant. Formerly-respected information sources will publish mysteriously persuasive nonsense. We will feel our loss of understanding as pervasive helplessness and meaninglessness. We may take up pitchforks and revolt against the machines—and in so doing, we may destroy the systems we depend on for survival.

Worries about AI risks have long been dismissed because AI itself sounds like science fiction. That is no longer possible. Fluent new text generators, such as ChatGPT, have suddenly shown the public that powerful AI is here now. Some are excited about future possibilities; others fear them.

We don’t know how our AI systems work, we don’t know what they can do, and we don’t know what broader effects they will have. They do seem startlingly powerful, and a combination of their power with our ignorance is dangerous.

In our absence of technical understanding, those concerned with future AI risks have constructed “scenarios”: stories about what AI may do. We don’t know whether any of them will come true. However, for now, anticipating possibilities is the best way to steer AI away from an apocalypse—and perhaps toward a remarkably likeable future.

So far, we’ve accumulated a few dozen reasonably detailed, reasonably plausible bad scenarios. We’ve found zero that lead to good outcomes.

I'm asked some probing questions. Here's my answers.

A few days ago I got an email from someone who asked me questions about myself. Since I'm highly interested in my self (assuming I have one; Buddhists would say I don't), I decided to share my answers in a blog post. The questions are in boring black type. My responses are in vibrant red. 

1. Can you confirm why you are now the (Spiritual Leader of the Church of the Churchless) ? Well, I guess it is because I started this blog in 2004, and I'm still the only person in charge of the blog. So I keep on electing myself to be the Spiritual Leader, since my wife isn't interested in the job and our dog prefers to chase squirrels and sniff gopher holes -- which sometimes seems more appealing to me than writing blog posts.

i) You stated you spent 35 years as a member? Of the human race? Of the Democratic Party? Oh, you're probably referring to the 35 years I spent as a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the religious group headquartered in India and led by a guru. 

 

ii) Is that True? Absolutely true. I was initiated by Charan Singh in 1971 but I applied for initiation in 1970, so I count the 35 years as being from 1970 to 2005, when I began to view myself as no longer being an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

 

2. If the answer is in the affirmative is it then true to state that you may have some medical condition affecting your brain; Until now I wasn't aware that medical conditions affecting the brain could be diagnosed by someone reading blog posts. I'm impressed that you have this ability. You should write a paper for the Journal of the American Medical Association so others can learn from you.

 

i) That it took you that long to understand that you made a mistake? I don't believe it was a mistake to spend 35 years as a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. For most of that time I embraced the teachings, meditated diligently, and enjoyed the companionship of my fellow satsangis (other initiates). I also don't believe I made a mistake when I married my first wife, even though we were divorced after 18 years of marriage, since we were happy together for most of that time. We all change with the years. Nothing is permanent. So says the Buddha.

 

ii) Or is the case simply that you are not worthy of becoming a (Spiritual Master) so your (Ego) made you set up this nonsense (Church)? Well, as I've noted in blog posts, my conscious reason for starting this blog was the re-election of George Bush as president of the United States in November 2004. Bush got a lot of support from evangelical Christians, so I wanted to write about the downside of fundamentalist religious dogma. If you read the introductory posts I wrote in 2004, you'll see that I consider spirituality to be an individual affair, so in no way do I consider myself a Spiritual Master -- though I admit that my ego likes the idea of being worshipped. Sadly, our dog often doesn't come when I call her, so I'm not even a Canine Master.

 

3. Finally can you confirm when you look into the (Mirror) do you see (Brian) or in the alternative you see (Brianna) perhaphs your have issues with your (Gender- identity); Ooh, what a profound question. Whatever spiritual practice you have been engaging in clearly has elevated your consciousness to what appears to be a childish level. Though I've been insulted more creatively by actual children. No, when I look in the mirror I just see myself. However, the older I get, the less eager I am to see myself close up, so I do stand quite a ways away from mirrors. Regarding my gender identity, I'm a "he/him." Thanks for asking about my preferred pronouns. I admire your commitment to LGBTQ diversity. 

 

i ) Or are you a coward in wolfs clothing drinking and leading hedonistic  life  that proves you can not get it up?? My drinking is pretty pitiful. Usually I have one glass of wine a month at the meeting of our Salon discussion group, just because I like the taste of wine and it seems to enhance conversation. I wish my life was more hedonistic, but it's pretty damn boring. I do enjoy taking a vaporizer full of Oregon-grown marijuana into a hot bath every night. It relaxes me and I view marijuana as more healthy than alcohol. I don't get the connection you appear to be making between a hedonistic life and "getting it up." But I appreciate your interest in my sex life. I just feel like we should know each other a bit better (well, a lot better) before we share too many personal details in that regard.

 

WHAT SAY YOU THE CHURCHLESS who never experienced any levels? Levels of what? I've taken elevators in some tall buildings and found those experiences of moving from floor to floor quite satisfying. Oh, maybe you mean a carpenter's level. I have one with the bubbles that move at different angles. I understand that there are electronic levels now, but I'm not enough of a handyman to justify buying one.

🍾🍾

🃏🃏🃏make sure you have not caught any of these🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀 You can be confident that I have never caught any crabs. I became a strict vegetarian in 1969. The last living thing I ate was a prawn that my mother made for me when I went home on a break from college. Seeing the prawn curled up on my plate made me realize that it used to be living in the ocean. So after giving up meat and chicken, the prawn led me to stop eating fish also. So for sure, crabs are safe around me.

 

SENT BY ONE OF THE MANY Disciples of the beloved Current-MASTER I'm sure Gurinder Singh Dhillon appreciates your devotion as expressed in the questions you've asked of me. Though I have to be honest and say that if the time you've spent in following the principles of Radha Soami Satsang Beas has led you to believe that emailing me these questions is a worthy spiritual pursuit, maybe you need to familiarize yourself more deeply about those principles.

 

I LOOK FORWARD TO YOU RESPONSES⚖️⚖️⚖️⚖️ I'm so pleased to share them with you!

Anesthesia with propofol raises interesting consciousness questions

Because I'm prone to getting non-cancerous polyps, which could turn into cancer if not removed, I've had colonoscopies every five years or so since I was around fifty.

The most recent ones have involved anesthesia with propofol, a frequently-used drug with few side effects but potential for abuse. Because it induces euphoria in many people. One study found about half. 

In 2011 I wrote "Finding enlightenment through a colonoscopy (and propofol)."

After talking about a disturbing conversation I had with a nurse about whether propofol truly prevents a patient from feeling discomfort/pain, or merely takes away the memory of discomfort/pain, I shared how propofol made me feel.

Some pleasantries were exchanged with the doctor and the nurses. Then the nurse anesthesiologist said she was starting to inject the propofol. For about fifteen seconds I felt completely normal. I was mildly concerned that the sedative wasn't working.

Next thing I knew, the nurse was telling me "We're all done."

My instant intuitive reaction was disappointment. I was disturbed to be back in everyday reality. It had been a lot more pleasant wherever I'd been, consciousness wise. I sort of felt like I'd jumped into ice water after basking on a warm beach.

Doing some Googling on propofol before writing this post, I learned this sort of reaction is why the drug is illicitly used non-medically.

There are reports of self-administration of propofol for recreational purposes. Short-term effects include mild euphoria, hallucinations, and disinhibition. Long-term use has been reported to result in addiction.  

I felt completely alert and awake. The only side effect, so far as I could tell, was that feeling of I wish I could have stayed in that pleasant propofol place longer. My first words to the nurse were, "I had some nice dreams. Mostly of having a colonoscopy, but with absolutely no pain, as if it was happening to someone else."

Later, after some reflection, I realized that calling what I experienced a "dream" wasn't entirely accurate.

Yes, it seemed like a dream at the time. But what are the chances that my brain would choose to dream about a colonoscopy, complete with thoughts of the endoscope wending its way here and there through my colon, while I was actually having an colonoscopy?

More likely is that I was minimally aware of what was going on, but the propofol created a feeling that it wasn't really happening to me.

So it's fascinating, but obviously old news, as old as human history probably, that a drug can alter someone's consciousness so completely, while they're under the influence of propofol reality not only seems much more pleasant than in normal life, that reality appears natural rather than artificial.

This raises the familiar question of how it is possible to know what really real reality actually is, if we humans are able to be in various sorts of subjective realities -- all of which seem to be true to the people experiencing them.

I got to thinking about this yesterday when I had eye surgery related to a glaucoma diagnosis that entered my life about eighteen months ago. I wrote a blog post about the surgery last night: "My eye surgery went well, though not a load of fun."

That wasn't the greatest title for the post, since the 30 minutes or so of the actual surgery was the most pleasant part of a long day. (The surgery was in Portland, about 75 minutes from Salem, where I live.) Here's what I said about the anesthesia. The UPDATE was written this morning.

Another stress reducer was my surgery starting on time. My hernia surgery [in 2021] was delayed. I found it tough to be all prepped and ready to go, then be told that because a previous surgery took longer than expected, mine wouldn't start for an extra hour.

But today I was wheeled into the outpatient operating room a few minutes early.

And it was good to be awake through the eye surgery, though I'd told the anesthesiologist that I enjoy propofol when I've had it for colonoscopies. He said that he'd put a small amount in my IV tube. Don't know if that happened, though, since I felt pretty much the same during the surgery.

UPDATE: I need to change my "pretty much the same" claim after idly scratching my chest while watching TV last night and feeling a strange lump. A big lump. Checking it out, I found that it was a square of adhesive with a metal connector thingie on the top. And not just one, there were three of them on the top of my chest where they were hard to see without looking in a mirror. Must have been put there in the surgery room to monitor my heart.

I have no memory of that happening, nor, as I thought more about it, of being wheeled into the recovery room. So now I believe that while I was conscious during most of the eye surgery, I wasn't for all of it, and the "pretty much the same" feeling I had while the eye was being operated on could have been a propofol effect where propofol reality feels more real than actual reality (and more pleasant).

Also, I forgot to credit the anesthesiologist with a clever question. He asked me, "So what did you have for breakfast today?" Quick-witted senior citizen that I am, I replied, "Ha, trick question! I didn't have anything to eat after midnight, as I was told to do by the pre-op instructions." He must feel this gets a more honest answer than "Have you had anything to eat after midnight?"

Again, the interesting thing is that for most of the eye surgery I could hear my doctor, a fellow in ophthalmology who was assisting him, and a nurse talk about some arcane medical subjects unrelated to my surgery that I couldn't understand very well, yet listened to with considerable interest.

As I noted in my blog post, I felt so calm, natural, and relaxed during the surgery, at the time I thought "The anesthesiologist must not have given me propofol, and maybe not even a sedative."

Meaning, the state of consciousness I was in felt like it was the really real reality mentioned above, even though my update to the post explained why almost certainly I was in an artificially-induced reality.

Anyway, I'm prone to find interesting philosophical questions in all kinds of places. Yesterday it was an outpatient surgery room at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland.

I might have had a mini-enlightenment last night

Even though I no longer believe in God, I'm attracted to non-religious Buddhism. So even though I don't engage in any sort of formal Buddhist practice, I like the idea of being enlightened. 

Just seems better than being endarkened. 

Though I can't say with any certainty that the intuitive flash that coursed through my consciousness as I was heading to bed last night was a sign of a mini-enlightenment (I'm way too humble to claim a maxi-enlightenment), I like the idea that it was.

So I'll go with that.

I was heading down the stairs that lead to the bedroom where I sleep when an unbidden realization hit me. This wasn't a thought, or an emotion. It was an instant knowing. 

What I knew at that moment surprised me, given my usual tendency to see myself more positively than I'm sure I deserve. 

It was: You're just an ordinary person. Nothing special. Nothing really to be proud of.

While this didn't feel like an emotion, the after-effect of the knowing was pleasant. I felt like a weight had been lifted from me, the burden of trying to appear more competent and accomplished than I actually was.

It was sort of akin to the sensation I had decades ago when, after believing that I could figure out a way to actively manage the investments my wife and I have and beat the market, I concluded after considerable reading and research that investing in index funds was the way to go.

Meaning, I'd just try to be average, as I wrote about in a 2008 post, "Profitable spiritual investing."

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these.

I didn't have a whole lot to say.

Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide.

I told my friends, "If the world and national economy go to hell, so will our investments. If things improve, so will our portfolio. It's a humble way to invest, since you're happy to be average."

This is pretty much the same way I feel about my spiritual investing strategy now.

For many years I thought I could beat the system. That is, find a way to salvation, God-realization, enlightenment, or whatever, that would lead to a better result than others would enjoy who weren't privy to the inside knowledge I possessed.

I've written about my shift from "active" to "passive" spiritual investing in previous posts:
"Running so fast to become motionless"
"Spiritual diversification, a sound investment strategy"
"Spiritual investing takes nothing"

Here's  an excerpt from "Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers," a 2014 post that echoes some of what I experienced in last night's mini-enlightenment. 

Maybe this statement seems paradoxical to you: I feel more genuinely spiritual now that I've stopped believing in God. But it makes good sense to me. Here's the main reason why.

I no longer feel special.

Virtually every religion and spiritual path considers that its adherents have a special relationship with God or whatever other supernatural entity they believe in. 

There are so many chosen people on Earth, they vastly outnumber the unchosen, the non-special group I'm pleased to be a part of.

I understand that feeling special has its own delights.

In my case, I was a member of an India-based spiritual organization which taught that those approved for initiation by the guru had been "marked" to return to God/heaven after a karma-cleansing meditation process.

Cool!

For about 35 years I embraced the enjoyable belief that, out of all the billions of people on this planet, I was one of a relative few who were the special beloveds of the supreme being. 

Of course, devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims feel the same way, along with countless believers in other theological belief systems. 

Eventually I started to realize that all the talk I was hearing about being "humble servants of the Lord and the guru" was, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit. Genuine humility wasn't much to be seen among devotees of my spiritual organization.

Not surprising.

Since members of this group were told over and over that they've been singled out by a higher power to learn cosmic truths and experience realms of reality not available to other human beings, naturally a pervading sense of "tribal" pride was evident throughout the organization.

We were the cool kids in the spiritual lunch room. Other faiths were inferior, since they didn't have the direct connection to God we did. 

I'm happy that this form of egotism has been discarded.

Sure, I've still got lots of other self-centered tendencies rattling around in my psyche, as we all do. But to get rid of The Big One, a belief that God had chosen me to be his best buddy for eternity, whereas my infidel wife wasn't going to get the same afterlife prize -- this increased my humility quotient by a lot.

Now I don't expect that I'm going to have any different sort of afterlife anyone else does. Namely, I strongly suspect, none at all. 

I also don't expect that there is any power guiding my life which isn't also directing the lives of every other entity on Earth. 

Thus I've embraced a sort of "index fund" approach to spirituality.

Meaning, I don't try to beat the market. I don't assume that I have any special knowledge, any special talent, any special relationship with reality. Whatever laws of nature apply to everybody else, I'm content with.

After I got Covid, science became my best friend

About two weeks ago, on Monday, January 30, I tested positive for Covid. A few days later I blogged about this on my HinesSight blog in I test positive for Covid. And feel positive about Paxlovid.

Well, it was a good run without ever getting Covid -- about three years since the nasty virus came to the United States in early 2020. 

After I had trouble sleeping last Saturday night, feeling on edge for no discernible reason, I took a rapid Covid test Sunday morning, which came back negative, even though my voice was a bit hoarse.

But Monday morning I had some nasal congestion and increased hoarseness, so I tested again. Yikes! A positive result. 

By Monday afternoon, thanks to quick work by my doctor's office and a Salem Health pharmacist, I'd started taking Paxlovid, a 5-day treatment that basically puts the brake on Covid replication to give your body a chance to fight it before the virus gets up a head of steam.

When the five days came to an end on Saturday morning, I wrote another blog post: My somewhat contrarian take on Paxlovid "rebound."

After getting some Covid symptoms and testing positive on a rapid test last Monday, this morning I completed the 5-day Paxlovid treatment regimen. 

My symptoms (nasal congestion and a cough) have been gone for a few days. The rapid test I took this afternoon was negative. So things are looking good. 

And I'm not all that worried about Paxlovid rebound, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Paxlovid rebound happens when someone tests negative after completing the course of treatment, then a few days later, either tests positive for Covid again or has a recurrence of symptoms. I got a chance to confirm my "no big deal" attitude when, last Wednesday, February 8, a rapid Covid test came back positive, which it also did the next three days, including today.

Yesterday I wrote: I get Paxlovid "rebound," but I'm OK with being Covid positive again. 

I still feel it isn't a big deal, even though last Wednesday, four days after I finished the Paxlovid treatment, I was dismayed to find that a rapid test I took showed I was positive for Covid again. So far (this is Friday) I'm still testing positive.

That's irritating, since I enjoyed my few days of post-Covid normalcy -- having coffee with a friend, going back to exercising at my athletic club, attending my Tai Chi class. 

On the plus side, my symptoms are milder than before, and they were pretty mild the first Covid time around. I haven't had to take a decongestant at bedtime, which I did during the first bout of Covid. And I came across a recent Scientific American story about Paxlovid rebound which indicates that my "contrarian take" on this actually is scientifically mainstream. 

Meaning, whether or not someone has a Covid treatment, the virus can wax and wane in the body.

So it's important to recognize that Paxlovid rebound doesn't mean you've got a fresh case of Covid. It just means that some pockets of the virus remained after the 5-day course of treatment, popping up when the Paxlovid brake was released.

I've shared these details about my Covid experience as background for the title of this post. Science became my best friend after getting the initial positive test result. Of course, for my whole life I've felt close to science. But this health challenge has helped me realize even more strongly how important it is to cling to scientific facts.

Those facts, of course, continually change.

Science skeptics see scientists changing their minds and wrongly think that this shows that the scientific method is flawed. Actually, the opposite is true. Science, unlike religion, is happy to be proven wrong, because that allows for a more accurate picture of reality to emerge.

When I got the rebound positive test last Wednesday, one of the first things I did was Google what you're supposed to do after testing positive again following a negative test when the Paxlovid course of treatment was over.

The recommendation was to isolate for five days, as if you were getting Covid for the first time. I recall that in the early days of Covid in the United States, the isolation period was ten days. But that was then, and this is now. 

So my five day isolation period ends tomorrow. Then I'm going to start returning to public places with a mask on for another five days. This makes sense to me. I liked what a doctor had to say in an article about Paxlovid rebound. 

People who experience rebound still tend to have positive outcomes. Paxlovid is meant to help prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death — and it continues to do so, even if rebound cases occur.

“From the data so far, Paxlovid rebound has not been dangerous,” says Dr. Klausner. “There are no reported, verified cases of hospitalization or death from rebound. Typically, people have a mild recurrence of symptoms or positive test results for a few days and then get better.”

Of course, since you are still infectious during this period, it’s important to isolate.

“The CDC advises five days of isolation from the onset of symptoms and an additional five days of mask use,” says Dr. Klausner. “While some experts advise continuing isolation until a rapid test is negative and remains negative, that is not practical for most people. The five-day rule is a good compromise balancing individual needs and public health risks.”

Note Klausner's words in the last paragraph: "While some experts advise," "Not practical for most people," "A good compromise."

Scientific research, especially in areas like medicine and public health, often isn't cut-and-dried, a matter of simply looking up the facts about something. Judgement is necessary.

I read numerous articles about what to do after Paxlovid rebound before concluding that a five-day isolation following by a five-day period of mask wearing when in a public space seems to be the way for me to go. It also essentially is the CDC guideline.

I could be wrong. But I'm much more likely to be right after reading reputable information from reliable sources than I would be if I just intuitively decided what to do. 

Some people who qualify for Paxlovid don't get this treatment because they haven't understood the real meaning of "rebound." Sadly, some doctors won't prescribe Paxlovid for the same reason. Science takes work. It requires effort, whether one is a producer of scientific research or a consumer of that research.

Science also can be confusing. But there's no doubt that science is humanity's best approach to understanding reality. As I said, the fact that science evolves, that scientific facts are constantly changing, is the key to its success.

Sure, medical doctors and public health personnel have gotten things wrong about Covid. However, they've gotten hugely more right than wrong, especially when compared to the conspiracy theories about Covid that have caused untold deaths and suffering. 

Vaccines work. Paxlovid works. Don't believe those who say otherwise. I'm much rather put my faith in science, even though it isn't perfect, than in religious belief or wacko conspiracy theories that have no grounding at all in reality.

I'm told that the RSSB guru said I'm good, or am a good soul

Today I got this message from someone who, unlike me, still attends the satsang meetings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the India-based religious organization that I belonged to for 35 years, before RSSB and me parted our ways.

Baba Ji refers to the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

I heard today from someone who said “Baba Ji said that Brian Hines is good (or a good soul).” I am not sure which or maybe both, because his English is a little hard for me to understand.

I told this person, Ah. That's nice.

I said that because it was indeed nice to hear this unsubstantiated rumor. For even though I've been critical of Gurinder Singh's business dealings while the RSSB guru, and I have problems with other aspects of his stint as guru, I don't feel any personal ill will toward him.

During the period I was writing three books on behalf of RSSB, I met with Gurinder Singh occasionally and found him a pleasant competent person to deal with. We also exchanged letters and I was pleased to perform security seva (volunteer work) during some of the guru's visits to the United States and British Columbia.

It isn't that I spend much time, or any time, really, wondering whether Gurinder Singh has a favorable opinion of me. I simply felt good when I heard that reportedly the RSSB guru thinks I"m good, or am a good soul.

I prefer the former, since I no longer believe that I have, or am, a soul. 

The broader issue here, I guess, is whether it ever makes sense to say that someone is bad. Or, I suppose, good. For it seems to me that most people, and this might even include all people, try to do the right thing insofar as it appears to them.

Of course, there's no doubt that some people do terrible things: murder, rape, torture, and so much else that's despicable. But we can harshly criticize the doing of those things without calling the person who does them "bad" or "evil." 

Good and bad are words that imply a choice in how we act. I'm deeply skeptical that free will actually exists. More likely is that we all are simply acting in accord with what complex and difficult-to-discern causes both inside of us and outside of us have determined that we must do.

So I don't look upon myself as being a good person, or a bad person. Sure, I feel that by and large I'm a decent human being, but I'm well aware of my defects and shortcomings, which are numerous.

At any rate, I'm pleased that the RSSB guru supposedly looks upon me positively. Though I don't mind being argumentative and confrontational, I prefer to get along with other people whenever possible, even when we disagree.

Best wishes for a pleasant 2023

This being New Year's Eve, with several hours to go here on the west coast before 2022 departs, I want to share a few thoughts about how this year has gone on this blog, and what I look forward to in 2023.

First, I'm thankful for those who visit the Church of the Churchless, especially the regular visitors. Without people reading what I write, this blog would be a private diary, not a public square. 

Those who leave comments on my blog posts earn a special thank you. 

Just as those posts appeal to some, but not to others, I agree with some comments, but not others. No matter. The tagline of this blog is Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. Independently minded people will agree about some things and disagree about other things.

What's important is the conversation, the dialogue, the exchange of ideas.

Even if someone reads a post on this blog and doesn't comment on it, that's still a valuable communication if what I wrote stimulates them to think more deeply about some aspect of our shared humanity.

After writing 3,310 posts for this blog over a bit more than 18 years, occasionally I feel that there isn't a whole lot left for me to say. This may be true for some subjects, especially since I no longer have as strong a desire to bash religion and praise atheism as I did previously.

But there's always more to say about living life as pleasantly and wisely as possible, no matter if we're a fervent religious believer or a committed devotee of godlessness. 

More binds us than divides us. I'm sure about that. Yes, religion and politics can be divisive, since it is natural to feel that our way is the best way. (Of course, we should remember that others feel the same about their own way.)

However, when it comes to family, love, health, misfortune, accomplishments, tragedy, and all the other ups and downs that come with being a human, almost everybody struggles with the same sorts of problems and enjoys the same sorts of pleasures.

So I wish for you in 2023 what I wish for myself and my family/friends. Happiness. Safety. Health. Peace of mind. However, it's virtually impossible to enjoy these things without their opposites popping in for an unwelcome visit.

But hopefully we all will have more of the positive side of life next year and less of the negative side. If this blog can play a small role in that overall positivity, I'll be pleased. Not that I won't be critical of people and things that strike me as deserving of criticism. 

I just want us to feel like we're part of a community of people seeking truth and wellbeing in a wide variety of ways, supporting each other in our individual pursuit of the good life.

My icy driveway experiment: what slides furthest?

Following up on my previous post where I spoke about the freezing rain that coated my area of Oregon with a sheet of ice yesterday, I'm pleased to present the video results of an experiment I conducted today on our very icy driveway in rural south Salem.

My quest was to determine what would slide furthest: a shoe, a banana, or a stuffed wolf? After the experiment, I then attempted to rescue the wolf from the middle of the driveway, which didn't go so well, as shown in the video. Nonetheless, I await my senior citizen scientist award.

Here's our 2022 Christmas letter, along with freezing rain thoughts

First, I'm pleased to share the 2022 Christmas letter that I wrote for my wife and I, which we call a Holiday Greetings to be all inclusive and non-religious. If you're addicted to reading Christmas letters, you can help feed your habit by clicking here, where you'll find the letters I wrote from 1995 onward.

After the letter, which is in both PDF and JPEG formats, I'll share some thoughts from unusually frigid Oregon about what freezing rain has to say about the Big Questions of Life. And also, mundane questions.
Download 2022 Christmas Letter PDF

Regarding freezing rain, it is one of many pieces of evidence that the laws of nature which govern our world weren't designed by a benevolent Creator, since freezing rain is the nastiest form of precipitation. Rain can be pleasant. Snow, which is frozen rain, also can be pleasant.

But freezing rain is just flat-out nasty. In February 2021 a freezing rain ice storm decimated our part of Oregon, including our rural property, as documented in photos I took. 

At the moment a milder, but still damaging, bout of freezing rain is causing problems in northwest Oregon, where the temperature was a chilly high of about 26 today. Luckily, we live in an age of pretty damn accurate weather forecasting. Yay, science!

So meteorologists gave advance notice that after eastern Oregon got hit with the edge of a polar vortex that is causing very low temperatures and nasty weather in most of the United States, an approaching low pressure system from the Pacific would cause east winds to funnel cold air through the Columbia River gorge and other mountain passes into western Oregon, where I live.

Now that cold air from the east is combining with warmer moisture coming from the west to produce freezing rain. This graphic shows how freezing rain happens, which is related to sleet. Again, yay, science!

If you've never experienced freezing rain, congratulations. It's nasty stuff. Driving or walking in rain or snow is completely doable. I have winter tires on my Subaru Crosstrek. Snow is no big deal to me, aside from worries about other people with less capable vehicles running into me.

But freezing rain produces black ice. Usually you can't see it on roads or walkways. It's a sheet of ice. No matter what car you have, or what tires you have, going down a hill covered in ice is not something you want to experience (unless you have a love for frequenting auto body shops).

Yet currently some major roads in Oregon, including parts of I-5, are closed due to accidents, almost certainly because of freezing rain. Which leads to a Big Question: what causes someone to head out on a freeway, or any road, when freezing rain is forecasted?

For days, news stories have told people that if they don't have to drive on Thursday night or Friday morning, they shouldn't. It's just too dangerous with freezing rain a near certainty.  Not a complete certainty, as this forecast from one of my weather apps for our location says.

I'm hoping that the ice we get tonight and part of tomorrow morning, before freezing rain becomes regular rain, is at the bottom end of the probability, rather than the full .4 of an inch forecasted. Currently we only have a tenth of an inch or so -- enough to make things really slippery, but not enough to topple limbs or trees on to power lines. I'm suspecting we might get a quarter of an inch by tomorrow.

But the odds obviously were that some freezing rain would hit western Oregon. Now, I realize that some people don't pay as much attention to news as I do. I also realize that some people don't believe the news, or weather forecasters, because sometimes they get things wrong.

Thus those are the people out on the roads right now, causing accidents. Maybe they saw that the weather was really cold but dry for most of today and figured that the forecast of freezing rain was wrong. 

Now some of them, maybe a lot of them, are paying the price for believing that their personal thoughts about the weather overshadowed what professional meteorologists were saying about the weather. Probably few of them liked to say Yay, science! 

Life is difficult. There's no way around that inescapable fact.

However, we make life more difficult when we fail to gather as much information about reality as possible in any given situation. If you go out driving when you don't absolutely have to when freezing rain is forecasted, you're causing yourself a preventable problem.

I'm not saying that I always practice what I preach. Yesterday I decided to start our Honda generator to make sure it was working if the electricity goes out in this ice storm. I found that the battery was completely dead. Thankfully, the generator started with a single pull of the manual cord.

It wouldn't recharge, so I ordered a replacement battery.

Then I recalled all the times I'd walked by the trickle charger connected to the generator battery in our garage, noting a single green light. There should have been two lights on: the green power light, and another light that shows the charging status, green if fully charged.

So that one green light meant there was a problem with the battery. I ignored what I kept seeing. I don't know why. Maybe because the battery was fine the last time I started the generator. Maybe because I simply wanted to assume that the battery was OK, and something was wrong with the trickle charger.

Whatever the reason, I neglected a fact that I should have paid attention to. Live and learn. That's all we can do, since mistakes are going to be with us as long as we're alive. My advice, though, is to do your best not to make the mistake of taking freezing rain lightly.

The "magic" in magical moments comes from our own mind

After including a quote in a previous blog post about how we construct the environment in which we live, thanks to how the human brain functions, I got to thinking about the implications for magical moments.

We all have them, though it's difficult to say whether there's much agreement between people as to what constitutes a magical moment. Here's some examples from my life, using my own intuitive definition.

Birth of my daughter
Catching big waves on Maui with my boogie board
Marrying my wife
Seeing Janis Joplin perform in person 
Taking mescaline with a friend in the Sierra Nevada mountains
Spending two weeks in India with the guru who initiated me

Since I'm writing this post on my churchless blog, I'll use the last example as a focus of my discussion about what makes a moment seem magical.

For a long time -- I went to India in 1977 because I wanted to see Charan Singh, my guru, face-to-face, having been initiated by a proxy in 1971 -- I believed that what made those two weeks at Dera Baba Jaimal Singh in the Punjab so magical was the atmosphere emanating from the guru.

However, this doesn't make much sense. 

As I wrote about back in 2005 in "Did I see God in first class?", my wife didn't find seeing Gurinder Singh, Charan Singh's successor, to be at all magical, even though devotees of the guru undoubtedly did.

Psychedelic researchers speak of the importance of set and setting in determining the nature of a LSD (or similar drug) experience. “Set” includes the personality of the individual; “setting” includes cultural views about what is real. If someone with a devotional frame of mind joins a group like RSSB that affirms the divinity of a guru, then this person may very well see God sitting in first class. I, on the other hand, just saw an Indian man.

My wife, Laurel, joined me in Palm Springs a few days later. She was more interested in shopping and sunshine than attending the bhandara, but I did talk her into going to two RSSB meetings. At one of them she got to sit in the front row, just a few feet away from the stage where Gurinder Singh spoke and answered questions—a highly favored spot to devotionally-minded disciples.

Afterwards Laurel said to me, “He just seemed like a regular person.” I couldn’t argue with her. I believed then, and still do, that Master Gurinder Singh is uncommonly intelligent, insightful, well-spoken, charismatic, and inspiring. But I had no reason then, nor any now, to assert that he is God in human form. I’ve stopped being concerned with the level of divinity someone else possesses, and now am almost exclusively focused on getting in touch with my own hypothesized higher self.

So I now see magical moments as being akin to a happy moment, sad moment, exciting moment, boring moment, or any other kind of moment where someone's frame of mind generates the adjective before "moment."

Sure, there has to be a substantial outside reality in a moment. It's a mistake, though, to view external circumstances as producing the magical aspect of a moment, because different people will view those circumstances differently.

My wife saw an Indian man sitting on a stage. Many of his devotees saw a guru who is God in Human Form. Big difference. I highly enjoyed catching big waves that would scare someone who wasn't used to doing this. Big difference. I found Janis Joplin's singing and overall style really appealing. Others with a different musical taste wouldn't like her voice. Big difference.

Thus it's wonderful to experience a magical moment. But almost always the credit for the magic should go to the brain of the person having that experience, not to the external circumstance.

My daughter Celeste is a much better skier than I am, or my wife is. I remember us going with Celeste to ski on Mt. Hood here in Oregon many years ago. Celeste talked us into taking a lift up to the highest point on the mountain, where we'd never been before.

When we got off the lift, I instantly realized that the snow was much more akin to a sheet of ice. Celeste took off down the steep slope, turning with ease, giving every sign of having a magical moment up there on a sunny cold day with such a beautiful view.

Me, all I could think of was "I hope I don't break a leg" as I gingerly made my way down, snow-plowing in an inelegant fashion. My daughter and I shared the same external circumstance, but for her it was magical and for me it was terrifying. 

Emotional highs and lows are a big part of our humanity

Last Saturday I watched a couple of college football games that put me through an emotional wringer.

I summarized those ups and downs in the first paragraph of a post I wrote on my HinesSight blog, "Pushing the pile" doomed Oregon State against USC.

While yesterday's Oregon vs. Washington State football game had an emotional arc for Ducks fans like me that went pre-game optimism - most of second half despair -- last few minutes elation (amazing comeback by Oregon), the Oregon State vs. USC game was pretty much the opposite.

In discussing the games with a friend the next day during our traditional Sunday coffee get-together, I tried to extract some philosophical wisdom from my football watching experience.

I told Jim that the reason I felt so happy when Oregon scored three touchdowns in about 2 1/2 minutes at the end of the game and ended up beating Washington State was that I'd felt so unhappy for most of the second half when it looked like defeat was heading Oregon's way.

Now, this is a pretty damn obvious observation. 

But it's easy to overlook for those -- me included -- who think at times that life should be unalloyed positivity, filled with love, happiness, truth, virtue, and other desirable qualities. 

As Taoism points out though, with Alan Watts popularizing the Taoist notion of yin and yang being inescapably interrelated, there's no up without down, no love without hate, no virtue without vice, and so on for any pair of seeming opposites.

Which aren't really opposites, because they're better thought of as being two sides of the same coin. 

That philosophical coin also has an edge, of course. Meaning, there's a neutral aspect to most qualities. However, I'm not attracted to that sort of blandness. Most people aren't. We want life to be vibrant, not blah.

When the Winter Olympics are on, occasionally I catch a glimpse of a curling competition. I don't understand the rules of curling. I don't care about curling. Even if an American team is being shown on TV, I have little interest in whether the team wins or loses.

So I watch curling with very little emotion. 

Yes, I'm calm and peaceful as I watch people sweep the ice after a teammate sets the stone (if that's what it's called) in motion. I'm also bored. I'd much prefer to be watching a football game where I do care which team wins or loses.

That caring produces good feelings when the team I want to have win, actually does. And it produces bad feelings when my favored team loses. But that's how emotions work. If you love somebody, it hurts when something bad happens to them.

Again, what I'm saying is obvious to most people.

The only way we can recognize a positive feeling is because it stands out from the background of a negative feeling. If I was happy from birth until death, there would be no way for me to grasp what happiness is, since I never would have experienced unhappiness. 

I'm bringing this up because some people do believe that a goal of spirituality is to be in a steady state of detached calm, no matter what happens in their life.

This sounds horrible to me. 

Time for a summer blog post re-run

It's hot here in Oregon. Really hot. Hundred degree hot. Way hotter than normal. (Thank you for nothing, global warming.)

This evening my brain doesn't feel like composing a fresh blog post. Time to dig into my vast repository of Church of the Churchless posts, 3,225 over the past 18 years, and share a summer re-run.

I wrote this one in June 2005. It's one of my favorites. Of course, I probably shouldn't say that, since now the other 3,224 blog posts are going to feel bad. Oh, well, can't worry about that when it's this hot.

Did I see God in first class?

I may have seen God in first class. The first class section of an Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to Palm Springs, to be exact. Or, maybe I didn’t.

In the early ‘90s I was traveling from Portland to attend a “bhandara," or spiritual gathering, of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees in Palm Springs. After changing planes in San Francisco I found myself in a right side aisle seat in the coach row directly behind first class, idly watching other passengers board.

A middle-aged Indian gentleman caught my eye. Bearded, he was wearing a white turban and blue jeans. His first class seat was across the aisle and one row up from mine. Before sitting down he glanced around the rear of the plane and our eyes briefly met. Then he took his seat and I returned to perusing a magazine. Nothing special seemed to have happened.

But it had, to quite a few other people sitting near me. For they were Bay Area RSSB members who also were heading to Palm Springs for the bhandara where the satguru (true guru) was to speak. And that Indian gentleman sitting a few feet away from me was the satguru—Master Gurinder Singh.

I began to hear whispers. “That’s him.” “The master is sitting in first class.” “I don’t believe it.” I hadn’t recognized Gurinder Singh, even though I’d seen him before at a bhandara in Vancouver, B.C. Fervent RSSB devotees consider the satguru to be God in human form, much as Jesus is regarded by devout Christians.

The difference being, Jesus is dead and Gurinder Singh was sitting alive and well in an Alaska Airlines first class seat. Imagine that a Christian gets on a plane and sees Jesus seated a few rows ahead of him and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the atmosphere on the flight to Palm Springs—among the RSSB disciples, at least.

I got mildly caught up in the excitement. However, even back then, when I was much more involved—psychologically and otherwise—with RSSB than I am now, I didn’t consider that seeing the satguru was a big deal. And until I made the connection between “Indian man wearing a turban” and “Master Gurinder Singh,” seeing him wasn’t even a small deal.

For I didn’t feel a hint of anything special until the disciples around me started up the “It’s him!” whispering campaign. Wouldn’t you think that if a person truly is God in human form, such would be obvious? Not just to those who already believe in the person’s divinity, but to everyone—believer and unbeliever alike. Jesus, of course, suffered the same lack of recognition. If his purported godliness had been transparently apparent, impossible to deny, by the time he died Jesus would have had a lot more than a handful of followers.

Psychedelic researchers speak of the importance of set and setting in determining the nature of a LSD (or similar drug) experience. “Set” includes the personality of the individual; “setting” includes cultural views about what is real. If someone with a devotional frame of mind joins a group like RSSB that affirms the divinity of a guru, then this person may very well see God sitting in first class. I, on the other hand, just saw an Indian man.

My wife, Laurel, joined me in Palm Springs a few days later. She was more interested in shopping and sunshine than attending the bhandara, but I did talk her into going to two RSSB meetings. At one of them she got to sit in the front row, just a few feet away from the stage where Gurinder Singh spoke and answered questions—a highly favored spot to devotionally-minded disciples.

Afterwards Laurel said to me, “He just seemed like a regular person.” I couldn’t argue with her. I believed then, and still do, that Master Gurinder Singh is uncommonly intelligent, insightful, well-spoken, charismatic, and inspiring. But I had no reason then, nor any now, to assert that he is God in human form. I’ve stopped being concerned with the level of divinity someone else possesses, and now am almost exclusively focused on getting in touch with my own hypothesized higher self.

I understand the allure of what Hindus call bhakti marg, salvation through love and devotion. Though much more inclined to the spiritual path of jnana (knowledge through meditation), I’ve got my bhakti tendencies and have been known to shed a tear at the thought or sight of a guru. But that was then. I believe that I’m wiser now.

Wiser, because I’ve concluded that if I have to think or emote my way to reality, this isn’t a reality worth having. When I let loose of an object, gravity takes it to the ground regardless of whether I’m thinking “Gravity is great” or feeling “I love gravity so much!” Gravity, like all the other laws of nature, just does what it does—automatically.

If there is a spiritual dimension to reality, it makes sense to me that higher laws of the cosmos also will operate naturally and spontaneously. When my inner vision is clear, I’ll experience them without effort, just as I open my eyes in the morning and effortlessly see a world guided by physical laws.

As I quoted Philip K. Dick in the course of describing the Church of the Churchless symbol, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” This probably is my favorite spiritual one-liner. In my opinion that single sentence, when properly understood, contains the entire essence of volumes of profound mystical literature that fills my bookcases.

If I have to believe in God in order to experience God, then that experience is of my own belief, not of God.

I’d be overjoyed to see God in human form. Heck, in any form. A formless form would be fine also. But I want this seeing to be unmistakable, crystal clear, impossible to be doubted. I don’t want to substitute imagination for the real thing.

Maybe I saw God in first class. Maybe. Maybe isn’t good enough. I want to be sure that God is more than, as the song goes, “just a slob like one of us.” Show me. Then I’ll believe, not before.

I respond to a B.S. comment about my 52 years of meditation

UPDATE: Spence Tepper has apologized to me for his ridiculous attempt to claim that my 35 years of daily meditation while a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, usually for several hours a day, amounted to "nothing." Good for Spence. He recognized how wrong he was.

Hopefully from now on he will realize that my approach to meditation is the wise one: don't challenge someone's personal experience in meditation, but DO challenge any claim that this experience proves the existence of a supernatural realm beyond the physical.

Spence doesn't like my skepticism toward his brand of religious fundamentalism. I've pointed out to him that his proselytizing comments are being left on a Church of the Churchless blog, not a Church of the Churched blog. For 18 years I've criticized religious fundamentalists who want others to believe in their dogma without any evidence. I sure won't stop now.

One of the joys, if that's the right word, of having a churchless blog for the past 18 years is that I get a lot of first hand experience responding to religious fundamentalists who, for reasons known only to them, like to leave judgmental comments on a blog devoted to spiritual independence.

Here's a latest example, a comment from Spence Tepper today which was so ridiculous, I figured it deserved to be elevated to a blog post so its absurdity could be on fuller display. My responses to Tepper are in bold italics. 

Hi Brian Ji
You wrote
"Hope this clarifies things. Demanding proof of someone who, say, claims to have experienced the divine sound and light that creates and sustains the cosmos is fully warranted."

Exactly. And that's why there is the meditation.

Had you conducted the practice with any discipline at all you would have your own evidence first hand.

Wrong assumption #1. I was initiated by Charan Singh into the practice of meditation as taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) in 1971, after first learning to meditate from a yoga teacher while in college.

I diligently followed the RSSB meditation instructions for 35 years. Never missed a day of meditation. Mostly I meditated for 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours a day. When I was working and had a young child, it was more difficult to do the prescribed 2 1/2 hours. So I had plenty of discipline in my meditation. You shouldn't make assumptions about someone else's meditation experience.

Also, hope you realize that RSSB stresses that initiates shouldn't talk about their meditation experiences. I'm OK with this being done, since I've done it myself. But you, like me, are breaking a RSSB rule.

You could have said," Yes, I saw the blinding light and have been able to reproduce it at will. Then I saw the sun, then the moon. I'm convinced it is simply the brain gaining access to signal directly outside the visual nervous system....but why the sun, why the moon? I'm still investigating to try to see where these images may have come from. They are far more intense than memory, especially when I can take time to look at them, even approach them... "

You could have developed a real theory around real information.

I did develop a real theory around real information. Based on my 35 years of RSSB meditation experience, and countless (almost) conversations with other members of RSSB about meditation, I've come to the conclusion that while some people report seeing scenes of supernatural regions of existence beyond the physical, almost certainly these don't reflect an objective reality but rather are subjective emanations of their brains, since there is no demonstrable evidence of those supernatural regions other than subjective reports.

Now all you have is the second hand evidence of the founders of every religion. And of every mystic who ever lived and documented what they went through.

Utterly false statement. There are lots of different approaches to meditation. What I experienced during my 35 years of RSSB meditation was very close to, if not exactly, how Buddhist and Taoist teachings describe meditation. I felt my self slipping away, probably because I don't have or am a self. I felt a sense of unity with all things, probably because everything is interdependent. Mystics have all sorts of different experiences. I don't really consider myself a mystic, but I've certainly had mystical experiences that are very difficult to describe in words.

Yes it evidence. And yes it deserves to be evaluated. But the only way to do this objectively is create the conditions to recreate the experience in your own lab and then you may test it as millions of others have done and are doing every day, with any way you like, including testing your own hypothesis about the causes.

You failed to do this.

Not true. I conducted the experiment of meditation, RSSB style, for 35 years. I've written a lot on this blog about what I found. Use the search box in the right sidebar to find those posts. Your fundamentalist attitude prevents you from realizing that different people can meditate and have very different meditation experiences. There isn't one right way to meditate, and there isn't one genuine meditation experience. If you believe there is, you're hugely mistaken about what meditation is all about. 

Let me be more pointed, Brian Ji.

You didn't have to reproduce the entire journey.

Again, you're assuming there's only one journey people take in meditation. Actually, people have all kinds of different journeys. 

Any part of it would have been fine. But what you report is zero.

Not at all. Every day I meditate, continuing to the present -- today -- I have a decidedly-nonzero meditation experience. Just because it isn't your experience doesn't make it any less meaningful or valid for me. 

That's practically impossible.

It's very possible. You should get out more and talk with other people about their meditation experiences. Since I did so much public speaking for RSSB, wrote three books on behalf of RSSB, and was the secretary of our local group for many years, as noted above I've talked with lots of people about meditation. Again, a Buddhist or Taoist would find my meditation experiences perfectly compatible with their spiritual outlook.

Anyone with a minimum of self-discipline can conduct any of a variety of meditation methods and at least watch their thoughts.

I've done that, and much more, for 52 years of daily meditation. It's astounding how you believe that, without ever having met me or knowing me in person, somehow you believe that you're privy to what I've experienced in meditation. How do you think you know this? Obviously it isn't possible. 

They could at least report what was happening to their body as they did so... And as they worked to gain some control, some level of mastery.

Geez, unbelievable. All of your own meditation sure hasn't affected the Judgmental part of your brain. I could ask, "Spence, how could you do so much meditation and end up such a religious fundamentalist with an exaggerated sense of your own divinity?" Oops, looks like I did just ask that.

They could at least notice the change in their thinking during meditation. And even learn how their brain reacts to different thoughts, how simran works, how distraction alters your level of consciousness wakefulness, and how focus raises it to observe more thoughts, their seeds and their destination all at the same time.

Been there. Done that. For 52 years.

But you report zero.

Wrong.

Not only does that make no sense at all. It is downright suspicious.

And not in any way scientific.

So there is no point in leaping to conclusions when you have not made the least effort to note just exactly what happened and to report it here for peer review. Then we can discuss what is going on within.

Why? I'm preaching the gospel of spiritual independence on this blog. I don't view meditation the way you do, as a way of demonstrating how evolved meditation has made me. I see meditation as a form of mental exercise and relaxation, in much the same way I view physical exercise. Tai Chi helps me understand what my body can do. Meditation helps me realize what my mind can do.  

As to what others report, they are reporting what happened to them, not for you to take second hand, but to note as their guide, testable reference points. Your own experience from your own effort is all that matters.

Hey, I agree with your last sentence. So why did you write this lengthy comment, most of which goes against what you just said?

The other testimony is meaningless to you because clearly you didn't take it seriously. Sorry to be so blunt.

I'm sorry to be so blunt in return, but you're totally wrong.

But you are being less than candd to suggest that 35 years x 365 days x 2.5 hours was spent entirely unconscious.

Wrong again. Amazing how many times you can be wrong in one blog post comment. I was awake and aware for virtually every moment in my 52 years of daily meditation. Sure, occasionally I fell asleep, but that was fairly rare.

31, 937.5 hours...

That's not meditation. It's sleep.

And what you just said isn't an intelligent observation. It's bullshit. 

God can be an imaginary friend, even if you're an atheist

Recently I heard from a woman who has distanced herself from the Indian religious organization I was a member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

Her family is still very much into RSSB, so she asked me some questions about how I adjusted after being, like her, initiated by the RSSB guru and then coming to see that the RSSB teachings no longer made sense.

Here's one of her questions, along with my response. "Babaji" refers to the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Question for me: I find myself saying when I need help (to myself) Babaji help me- and then I realise that I don’t believe in him anymore and I don’t believe in god either- do you think there’s some sort of universal energy around us? 

My response: I wish there was, but I don’t think there is. But I could be wrong. Like you, I don’t believe in the RSSB gurus or in God. But I still talk to my guru, Charan Singh, and also to God. Life can be difficult. I like having imaginary friends.

To me it’s like watching a compelling TV show or reading a good novel. I can believe the show or novel is real and get all excited about what’s happening, even though I know that both are made up and aren’t real.

In the same way, I like to pretend at times that I believe in guru/God, just because it makes me feel better to do that, and I enjoy telling my problems to my imaginary friends, since my wife can get tired of hearing me complain about the same things after so many years of marriage (32 years).

Like I said, I don't find anything unusual in talking to someone who isn't real as if they could actually hear you. This isn't so different from sports fans yelling at the TV in a bar, exhorting their team to win the game.

 

Or me getting so nervous about what's going to happen in the Israeli spy thriller "Tehran" that I'm watching on AppleTV+. I realize that Tehran features actors, not real spies. But when there's a cliffhanger at the end of an episode, I can hardly wait to see if the woman who plays an undercover agent in Iran is going to succeed in her mission.

 

So it's no big deal for atheist me to lie in bed and say to myself, as I'm drifting off to sleep, "Hey, God, how are you doing? I doubt very much that you exist. However, if you do, it'd be great to get to know you. Feel free to pay me a visit, either while I'm awake or in a dream. And if you could do something to fix the sciatica in my right leg, that'd be great. Good night."

 

I talk in a similar fashion to Charan Singh, the RSSB guru who initiated me (by proxy) in 1971. I used to carry on a one-sided conversation with Charan Singh when I was a RSSB believer and thought it likely that the guru actually did reside within a corner of my consciousness, where he could guide me as need be.

 

Now I find that to be extremely unlikely.

 

However, occasionally I still have some things to say to Charan Singh, just because it makes me feel good to have him as an imaginary friend, along with God. This seems absolutely fine to me, since I'm well aware that an imaginary friend is much different from a real friend. 

 

 

Zen'ish adage: when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy

Whenever I have a Grand Intuition about something that really is obvious, I'm never sure whether (1) I deserve to be honored in the Great Hall of Enlightened Beings or (2) laughed at for not realizing sooner what I should have understood long ago.

(Personally, I'll go with #1, but I can't argue with someone else who favors #2.)

The core of today's Grand Intuition is the title of this blog post: When you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy. It's an emotional echo of some familiar Zen sayings.

Chop wood, carry water. 
When hungry, eat. When thirsty, drink. When sleepy, sleep.

Probably what got me to pondering this today was a slightly delayed reaction after listening to part of an interview on Sam Harris' Waking Up app yesterday. Harris spoke with a woman who said that equanimity was a central pillar of spiritual practice.

I didn't listen long enough to learn what she meant by equanimity. I'm assuming that this refers to remaining in a more or less steady calm emotional state no matter what happens to you: good things, bad things, neutral things.

This is in line with what the Sant Mat teachings I followed for thirty-five years as a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based spiritual organization, taught.

Lust. Anger. Greed. Attachment. Egotism. 

Those were the five deadly sins RSSB books and speakers warned against. Each has an emotional component. And in my current state of mind, each seems perfectly fine to me. They're simply a part of being human.

Sure, it makes sense to keep emotions within certain bounds. But those bounds are pretty damn loose. 

For example, lusting after someone you find attractive is how relationships, and marriages, often get started. Forcing them to have sex is out of bounds. Otherwise, lust is a natural feeling. Ditto with anger, greed, attachment, egotism, and every other feeling/emotion.

What I realized today more clearly than ever before was how, even though I'm no longer overtly religious, I still carry around vestiges of the religious teachings that were such a big part of my life for over three decades.

One vestige is how I've been considering that meditation and mindfulness were supposed to help me not get very upset when something went wrong in my life, nor unduly attached to the pleasure I feel when something goes right in my life.

In other words, I'd bought into that whole equanimity thing, albeit semi-consciously. 

Suddenly it hit me that life would be a whole lot simpler if I took a different approach. Be sad when I feel sad. Be happy when I feel happy. Be angry when I feel angry. Be ________ when I feel _________.

Again, not crazily emotional. Not emotional in a way that harms anyone. Just honestly emotional, embracing whatever I'm feeling at the moment without wondering, "Is it OK to feel this way?"

Yeah, it sure is OK. In fact, I've been feeling especially good today, because it feels like a weight has been lifted from my emotional shoulders. For a long time, more than 50 years, I've felt a need for self-improvement.

Simply being the person I already was -- not good enough.

I needed to meditate every day, read spiritual books, write spiritual books, improve how I related to other people, be kinder, more loving, less prone to negative emotions, you know, all that stuff the self-improvement/spiritual realization proselytizers tell us is necessary to truly be a Decent Human Being.

Which mostly is bullshit. Yes, if someone has a serious psychological problem that prevents them from functioning well or being satisfied with life, that points to a need for improvement.

But the notion that we need to become anyone other than the natural human being we already are is entirely false. When you feel good, feel good. When you feel bad, feel bad. Likely neither feeling will last very long. Embrace each while it lasts.

No pressure to become your "higher self." For one thing, there's no high or low when it comes to being human. For another thing, you aren't a self. You're simply you. 

I'm more proud of being married for 32 years than of being religious for 35 years

Today is our anniversary. Easy to remember, since Laurel and I got married on St. Patrick's Day, 1990. That makes 32 years we've been husband and wife. Or as Laurel might say, wife and husband. 

Whenever I look at our wedding photo, naturally I think, Damn, we looked so young back then! Well, yeah, that's what 32 years will do to you. Forty-one is way younger than seventy-three.

Another thing 32 years of being married will do is teach you a lot. (Actually, I've been married for 50 years, since my first marriage lasted 18 years; Laurel had never been married before.)

My theory is that if Buddha had really wanted to learn how to be selfless, he should have gotten married rather than going off on his own as a wandering sadhu, seeking his own spiritual development. 

Enlightenment is easy compared to living harmoniously with someone for a long time. Not completely harmoniously, of course. If two people always got along perfectly, I doubt they would be human. More like robots, since friction comes with every close relationship.

When I met Laurel, I was smitten not only by her beauty and wonderful personality, but also by how easily she and I could talk with each other.

And not just about easy subjects. Difficult ones also. 

I'm convinced that the key to a satisfying marriage, or indeed any relationship, is honest communication. Two people are going to disagree about many things. Laurel and I frequently debate whether we should do this or that.

But we rarely lose our temper with each other. Sometimes, just not often. We listen to each other. We do our best to compromise. We understand that while we have a lot in common, we also see the world differently.

Which is natural.

If two people were exactly alike, they wouldn't be in a relationship, but in something else that defies description, since it is impossible for two humans to be completely identical -- even identical twins.

By contrast, during the 35 years I believed in God, eastern religion variety, I never had a disagreement with God. Sure, that was because there's no sign of God. Impossible to have an argument with a nonexistent being.

So when religious believers are all proud because they have a personal relationship with God, I laugh at their folly. They have a personal relationship with an imaginary God. 

It's hugely easier to get along with a fantasy companion than with a real life companion.

This is why I look upon my 32 years of being married to Laurel as being much more of an accomplishment than the 35 years I was devoted to a guru and the God he taught his disciples to worship.

Not only God is beyond words, everything is

Often people say "God is beyond words."

No argument from me there, for several reasons. First, if God doesn't exist (the most likely scenario), then naturally God is beyond words, since no word describes nonexistence.

Second, everything is beyond words. It simply isn't possible to capture all of the characteristics of something in words, numbers, concepts, images, or any other means.

Even a single cell in our body defies description.

A recent article in The New Yorker made that clear. Every cell is completely filled with complex entities, all engaged in constant motion, and so far scientists have been unable to create a living cell from the raw materials that make them up.

Even more so, then, when it comes to describing ourselves. 

I got to thinking about this after having an initial counseling session yesterday with a Salem Health social worker, Wayne. I wrote about this on my HinesSight blog. 

Like most people -- which might really be all people -- I have some habitual ways of describing myself and my life. 

Meaning, I've concocted a story of who I am and how I came to be that way which I retrieve from my memory and use when the occasion demands. Naturally that story is both extremely brief compared to the 73 years I've lived, and also extremely selective, since it focuses on only certain aspects of my life.

There's no other option, of course. Neither for us, nor for reality as a whole.

Questions asked of us determine how we describe ourselves. The same is true of any other entity. As noted above, there's no way to fully communicate the nature of a single cell. All that can be done is point to certain characteristics that come to light via certain means of investigation.

Wayne asked me about my childhood. That wasn't his central focus, but like most counselors, he wanted to get a feel for my early years. 

In part, I said something like, "I was raised by my divorced mother, an intellectual who happened to be an alcoholic, which made my high school years difficult. She desperately wanted to learn the secrets of the universe, yet died without having succeeded. I've written a blog post about the 0ne hour I spent with my father. Not the best or worst hour. The only hour. He also was highly intelligent, along with being a jerk."

OK, better than saying nothing.

However, this doesn't begin to capture the full nature of how I see my mother and father, leaving aside the fact that what I know about them is just a tiny fraction of their life, and even that small part is necessarily viewed through the lens of my personal perspective, which is biased in many respects.

What I liked most about my 50 minutes or so with Wayne was the insights he got from talking with me in his office. It wasn't so much what I said, but how I was saying it. Indeed, each of us has certain ways of talking (and writing) that reflect our usual way of relating to the world.

Wayne correctly noted that I tend toward reason, rationality, thinking, and such. Yet I told him that frequently I'm also emotional and intuitive. For example, I never plan out what I'm going to say in a blog post, other than to have a very general idea of the topic.

I start writing, and then the post writes itself. That's the way I've always written.

I told Wayne that in college I sat down to write a 50 page paper, and in a flash the conceptual framework of the paper appeared in my mind. Then it was just a matter of typing what essentially was an already-written term paper.

Still, my ability to write is just a minute part of who I am, and I don't really know how my thoughts become words which become sentences which become something I share with the world. 

Even less do I know how my emotions work. I didn't make an appointment to see Wayne because I was dissatisfied with my thoughts. I wanted to get some counseling because a few health problems are making me anxious, and I want to learn how to reduce that anxiety, if possible.

It's really difficult to know ourselves, and even more difficult to know other people.

It's enjoyable to try, though. That's why we meditate, contemplate, walk in nature, become intimate with loved ones, talk with friends, read, write, create art, and so much else that bridges the gap between our consciousness and that of others.

That gap is never completely closed, though. Each of us is both an island unto ourselves, and a well-populated continent inhabited by everyone we have ever come in contact with -- for they have left countless marks on us that have helped us become who we are now.

Which can never be completely described. Nor even felt.

The mystery of us is inseparable from the mystery of the cosmos. We struggle to find words that cast light upon those mysteries, yet what they illuminate is so much less than what remains hidden.

"May I be free of fear" -- my addition to loving kindness meditation

For quite a while, maybe five years, I've been repeating a form of loving kindness meditation that I learned from listening to Tamara Levitt's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app.

It starts like this. Then "I" is replaced by "you," someone I care about (usually my wife), followed by "all" replacing "you."

May I be happy.
May I be safe.
May I be healthy.
May I be at peace.

Recently I've added a fifth sentiment.

May I be free of fear.

When I do the "all" thing, previously I envisioned the entire world, as if I was floating in space and casting loving kindness hopes over our planet.

Now, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I picture the Ukrainian people as I mentally say...

May all be happy.
May all be safe.
May all be healthy.
May all be at peace.
May all be free of fear.

As I wrote about in "What do you find inspiring about Ukraine?", the strength and courage of Ukrainians in the face of relentless aggression, bombing, and war crimes by Putin's forces is deeply inspiring.

Especially because fear must be omnipresent in Ukraine. Not in everybody. Not all the time. But when the air raid sirens sound, tanks are approaching, or missile strikes are heard nearby, it's entirely normal to feel fear.

How we handle that feeling is the important thing. I have little desire to read the book, Feel the Fear... and Do It Anyway, but I like the title. Here's how the author, Susan Jeffers, summarizes her take on fear.

FEAR TRUTH #1

The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow!
Every time you take a step into the unknown, you experience fear. There is no point in saying, "When I am no longer afraid, then I will do it." You'll be waiting for a long time. The fear is part of the package.

FEAR TRUTH #2

The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and…do it!
When you do it often enough, you will no longer be afraid in that particular situation. You will have faced the unknown and you will have handled it. Then new challenges await you, which certainly add to the excitement in living.

FEAR TRUTH #3

The only way to feel better about yourself is to go out and…do it!
With each little step you take into unknown territory, a pattern of strength develops. You begin feeling stronger and stronger and stronger.

FEAR TRUTH #4

Not only are you afraid when facing the unknown, so is everyone else!
This should be a relief. You are not the only one out there feeling fear. Everyone feels fear when taking a step into the unknown. Yes, all those people who have succeeded in doing what they have wanted to do in life have felt the fear - and did it anyway. So can you!

FEAR TRUTH #5

Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the bigger underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness!
This is the one truth that some people have difficulty understanding. When you push through the fear, you will feel such a sense of relief as your feeling of helplessness subsides. You will wonder why you did not take action sooner. You will become more and more aware that you can truly handle anything that life hands you.

Everybody can benefit from being, if not free of fear, at least less in the sway of fear. I think those of us of advancing age -- a gentle way of saying old folks -- especially need to find ways to be less fearful.

Sure, it's natural to become more cautious as we grow older. Our strength is less. Health problems limit what we can do. Sticking to routines can seem safer than pushing our boundaries. I spoke with a friend today about this.

I told him that not so long ago I was practicing karate rather than Tai Chi; I was riding around on a Suzuki Burgman scooter rather than a car; I was longboarding (big skateboard) rather than bicycling. Where did the more fearless me go who did those things? 

Nowhere, really. I'm still the same person. I just have fallen into what most 73 year old people do: play it safe whenever possible.

I'm not saying that we should lose all sense of fear and do dangerous things, though having written those words, actually that sounds like a pretty good idea. But we can be more daring and less fearful.

One of the reasons I like the streaming series Yellowstone is that it shows cowboys on a very large (and very beautiful) Montana ranch acting fearlessly. They can do this because they're highly skilled at riding horses, roping, and doing all the other stuff that a cattle ranch requires.

Last night my wife and I watched an episode where the ranch hands want to help out the family of a horse breeder who committed suicide after a bank foreclosed on his property. Their plan is to round up his several hundred horses, then sell them and give the money to the dead guy's family.

"They're all up at the top of that slope," a cowboy says. "How are we going we get them down without being killed in a stampede." "Well," replies another cowboy, "we could be cautious and figure out a safe way to do this, or... we could just say fuck it, ride up there, and do it." 

"Yeah, fuck it. That's a good plan," they all agree. The resulting scene was marvelous. Must have been difficult to film. Hundreds of horses galloping down a hillside with cowboys herding them along, also at full speed.

I found this really inspiring. When they got all the horses in a big corral and closed the gate, the cowboys looked at each other and said, "Damn, we did it!" A dangerous job. Scary, to normal people.

But no matter what fear they might have felt, they got on their horses and did it anyway.

Like Walt Whitman said, we all contain multitudes

Yesterday I surprised myself. Also, the day before. And today. In fact, every day. I surprise myself when my view of life changes from what it was before.

Which isn't really surprising, since life is full of change. It could even be said that life is change. Hearts beat. Lungs breathe. Neurons fire. When life becomes unchanging, that's called death.

The surprise that brought this blog post to life was me saying in a comment that I agreed with what another commenter had said about theistic religions being more satisfying. I wrote:

You might be surprised to hear this, but I also agree that theistic religions tend to be more satisfying than non-theistic faiths like Buddhism. This seems to be why so many Buddhists look upon the Buddha as a divine being rather than a mere teacher. And why prayer wheels, repeating Namu Amida Butsu as a mantra, and such are more popular than following the breath in meditation. My problem is that while I can occasionally pretend that I believe in a personal divine being, I really don't, so my occasional half-hearted attempts at embracing theism don't get me very far.

So I'm a devout atheist who dabbles occasionally with believing in a god, in sort of the same way as I'm a raspberry jam lover who occasionally buys a different flavor to put on my morning toast, but so far I've always returned to raspberry after a brief dalliance with another type of jam.

Walt Whitman, the poet, famously said:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

We all do. There isn't a single stable unchanging "me" or "you" or "them" anywhere to be found. We all contain multitudes. We all contradict ourselves. 

Religious believers contain a bit of atheism, just as atheists contain a bit of religious belief. Faithful spouses contain a bit of promiscuity, just as promiscuous people contain a bit of faithful spouse'ness. Liberals contain a bit of conservatism, just as conservatives contain a bit of liberalism.

Those bits may be mostly hidden, barely recognized, rarely or never acted upon.

However, to be human is to be complicated. We may try to put on a simple consistent face to the world, but within us there's always the potential of being a considerably different person than we are now.

This is beautiful.

The multitudes that comprise each of us are hugely more interesting than a solitary unchanging self would be. Our capacity to be many, not one, allows for growth, development, progress, unpredictability, creativity.

Imagine how blah a movie about the life of someone with no contradictions would be. It wouldn't take long before we'd become bored with the character, since there would be little drama to them.

When my wife and I started watching Ted Lasso on Apple TV+, I grew worried after the first few episodes. Lasso was so upbeat and positive in every circumstance, he seemed one-dimensional, not all that interesting.

Gradually, though, we got to know Ted Lasso in more depth, thanks to excellent writing and plot lines. The darker side of Lasso was exposed. We got insights into why his demeanor is usually so cheerful, and why sometimes he falls into despair (and panic attacks).

I never felt that the Ted Lasso character got diminished as the multitudes within him were revealed, not just the original Happy Face Lasso. With every contradiction that came to light, Lasso became more interesting and human, not less.

A commentary on Whitman's poem includes this passage:

What are arguably Whitman’s most famous lines appear here: “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

Whitman is recasting one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s central ideas: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. . . . Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. . . . To be great is to be misunderstood.”

For Whitman, as we have seen, the self is a continually evolving and expanding entity, and new experiences will always broaden and challenge and upset what a self believed earlier.

We must learn to be grateful to arrive at contradictions and to cultivate a sense of a self open and aware enough to “speak against” (the root meaning of “contradict”) the self that existed yesterday.

As “Song of Myself” has demonstrated throughout, a self that does not change is a stunted identity, dead to the transforming stimuli of the multitudinous world around us, stimuli that include the transforming words of this poem.

I give away eight boxes of books. And a lot of fond memories.

I woke up yesterday morning with a fresh insight: time for the books to go. Not just the small box of giveaway books that had been sitting on a table in my bedroom for quite while. 

Also, the boxes of books that had been languishing in the storage space above our carport for much longer, about fifteen or twenty years, I can't remember exactly.

Those books had a lot more sentimental value, which might explain why I hadn't thought of donating them before, even though I'd glance at the boxes every time I climbed up the dropdown ladder to get something out of the crawl space.

(Aptly named, since you have to crawl around on the sheets of plywood placed over the rafters, there not being nearly enough room to stand up.)

The eight boxes that I took this afternoon to the Friends of the Salem Public Library for their annual book sale mostly contained books that I'd used as research for three books I've written: God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder; Life is Fair; Return to the One.

Each was written in the spirit of seva, volunteer service, during the time I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a guru-centered religious organization with headquarters in India.

So the boxes of books were sort of like a mental archaeological excavation. They contained mostly fond memories of a period in my life when I held considerably different spiritual beliefs than I have now. I took photos of the boxes before I put them in my car.

The bottom box in the photo above contained some of the books I'd used in research for my first book, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder. I started to write it not long after Gurinder Singh Dhillon became the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas following the death of Charan Singh, the guru who initiated me in 1971.

I'd never even had a high school physics class, even though the book was about the relation between mysticism and the New Physics (quantum mechanics, relativity theory, etc.). It took years of reading, note taking, pondering, writing, and re-writing before the book was published by Threshold Books.

Radha Soami Satsang Beas had agreed to buy several thousand copies to resell at a low cost, which sweetened the deal enough for Threshold Books to agree to publish the book -- which they found appealing because I'd included so many Rumi quotes, and Threshold was a Sufi-oriented publisher.

Having developed a writing relationship with the folks in charge of books published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, my next book project was Life is Fair. This effort was even more meaningful to me, since I was told that Charan Singh had wanted to have a little book describing the karmic rationale for vegetarianism that he could hand out to people. 

When I was asked if I wanted to take on the project after it had stalled with other people attempting to write such a book, it took me about one millisecond to say "Yes! Absolutely." Being able to fulfill a wish of my guru before he died was a dream come true. Hey, maybe my meditation sucked, but I felt like I could write a book about karma and vegetarianism.

At times that feeling seemed like a fantasy. There were so many changes of direction and rewrites, I almost lost hope. Almost. Eventually I went to India to finish the book at the RSSB headquarters and it ended up being published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. One of the pleasant parts of writing Life is Fair was finding cartoons to illustrate some key points in a humorous manner.

I spent a lot of time at the marvelous Powell's Books in Portland, an hour's drive north of where I lived in Salem, sitting on the floor of the Humor section, thumbing through cartoon books featuring Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, and other comic strips.

Today I couldn't bear to let the cartoon books I'd bought go when it came time to unload the box they were in onto a library cart. Those were the only books I took home with me. I looked at a few pages and started laughing, then figured that while my spiritual/philosophical views have changed considerably, my love of humor hasn't.

The bottom box above mostly held books I'd gotten for my research into Plotinus, a Neoplatonist Greek philosopher. After Life is Fair was completed, I wrote Gurinder Singh and asked him if there were any other books I could write for Radha Soami Satsang Beas. He replied that they'd like to have a Mystics of the West series and listed some possibilities. Plotinus was one of them.

I'd heard about Plotinus but knew next to nothing about his philosophy. So even though Plotinus is notorious for being one of the most difficult Greek philosophers to understand -- his Enneads are full of confusing passages -- I dove into the deep waters of Plotinus and read every book about him in English, along with every translation of the Enneads in English. 

Return to the One was quite a writing journey. After several years of work, just as with the other two books I despaired that I'd ever reach a satisfactory endpoint. But I refused to give up, telling myself that if I had to write out the book on paper bags and leave them strewn on park benches, that's what I'd do. (Yeah, unrealistic and kind of dramatic, but writers have strange ways of getting through dark periods.)

In the end, Return to the One wasn't published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas for reasons I've talked about in other blog posts. A sticking point was that the RSSB publishing department wanted me to include a quotation from Charan Singh at the beginning of each chapter. I wasn't willing to do that, since this was a book about the philosophy of Plotinus, not a book about how that philosophy could be seen as relating to the RSSB teachings. So I published the book on my own. 

Anyway, I feel good about sending those eight boxes of books off to the Friends of the Salem Public Library. It was time to let the books go. I like to think that they'll end up with people who enjoy reading them as much as I did. They're filled with notes and highlighting. So whoever buys them will see what I found important, which may be quite different from what they think is important. 

Lastly, a (very) minor miracle. The eight boxes fit into the not-very-large back of my Subaru Crosstrek.

How us old folks view time

Over on my HinesSight blog, tonight I wrote "Time has a different flavor for old folks like me." Give it a read, especially if you're younger than me (likely you are), so you can see what the future holds.

This is how the post starts out.

Remember when you were three? Probably not. I recall what that age was like via my memory of what my young daughter and her friends would say when asked how old they are.

"Three going on four." They were so eager to be older, they'd fudge their age to get the next birthday into the answer.

Believe me, those days are long gone for us old folks. I'm fine with saying "73" when asked my age. What's more annoying is having to scroll down through history when a web site wants me to select the year I was born.

2000's, gone. 1990's, keep going. 1980's, around halfway there. 1970's, graduated from college. 1960's, high school. 1950's, childhood. 1940's, ah, finally reached the promised age-land. Which reminds me that World War II had only been over for a few years when I was born in 1948.

Dude, you're ancient! I'll say to myself.

For sure you'll never hear someone my age say "Seventy-three going on seventy-four." We've already got plenty of reminders that while time marches on for everybody, it feels like it's sprinting after you qualify for Medicare.

Live as if we and our loved ones are going to die

Admittedly this isn't the cheeriest subject for New Year's Eve, the last day of 2021 -- how we should live as if we and our loved ones are going to die.

But I got to thinking about this after watching an episode in Season 1 of Dickinson, an Apple TV+ series about Emily Dickinson, the 19th century poet.

Dickinson feigns illness in order to have more time alone in order to write her poetry. Her family has a doctor examine Dickinson. Given the sad state of pre-Civil War medicine, he misdiagnoses her as having a fatal disease.

What I found fascinating was how her mother, father, and brother reacted to the prospect of Dickinson's impending demise. 

One by one, they entered her room where she supposedly was dying and proceeded to be wonderfully honest.

Rather than their usual repressed selves, playing their rigid traditional roles, they spoke freely about their life, their regrets, their secrets. They could do this because their vision of Dickinson's soon-to-be death allowed them to be who they actually were, not who they pretended to be.

Sure, there are pros and cons of such honesty. Sometimes it makes sense to wear a mask that disguises our true self.

On the whole, though, I believe we'd be better off with that sort of transparency. Life is short. We don't have much time to come closer to our loved ones, friends, acquaintances -- the people who often fail to really know us because we don't allow them to see who we really are.

Being 73, I'm well aware that death can appear in a life at any time.

My mother, father, and sister all died at about my age. So in a sense I feel that I'm living on borrowed time. Several close friends from high school died many years ago. After watching that episode of Dickinson, I'm feeling like I need to live each day with a greatfer appreciation that I'm going to die.

Not immediately, almost certainly. But it could be sooner than I've envisioned -- which tends to be about ten years older than my current age, a bet that becomes less winnable with every passing year.

It's always bothered me that a Celebration of Life for someone only happens after they've died. That's when people speak about how much the person meant to them. Nothing wrong with that, but it sure would be a heck of a lot better if that honest talk happened while the person could hear those words.

Like most of my New Year's Resolutions, I'm not sure whether I'll be able to keep up this resolve. The Dickinson episode just made me realize how much I regret not being more open with my mother, father, and sister before they died.

Unlike Dickinson's family, there was no doctor saying "Your loved one is going to die." So there wasn't a sense of urgency that might have caused me to take a chance on being more honest about my feelings toward them.

Now it's too late, obviously. I think back to the one hour I had face-to-face with my father, a tale I've told in a blog post. 

When I saw him for the first and only time in a Boston hotel room, he'd told me that he was being treated for emphysema at a Boston hospital. But there was no mention of a fatal illness. So he and I wasted that one hour, as I described in the post.

My half-brother, Mike, opened the door. Apparently my father needed some support during this visit. John walked up to me and shook my hand. We didn’t hug or anything. No tears of joy. Nothing that you see in the movies. Real life isn’t like the movies.

What is real life like? Real life is having one hour in your life face-to-face with your father, and spending that time looking at General Electric manuals that he had arranged on the bed prior to my arrival, efficiently opened up to pages that he wanted to impress me with.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. I dutifully thumbed my way through manual after manual, listening to my father’s stories about how he went into GE plants that were having problems and got them back up to speed. “What the hell?” I kept thinking to myself. “If this is how my father wants to spend his time with his long-ignored son, so be it.”

We got through all of the manuals. I shook his hand again. When the door shut behind me and I started walking down the corridor to my rented car, I was so happy. Not happy that I had finally gotten to meet my father—happy that I would never have to see my father again.

Which I never did.

There's no way to revisit the past. I deeply wish I could. I'd somehow summon the courage to say, "Dad, we have so little time together. Let's be real. I don't want to look at those manuals. I want to get a glimpse of who you really are, and show you some of who I really am."

Hopefully I'll do better in the future. There's always so little time, and so much we should honestly share with those we're close to.

We don't know, so live now

Yeah, it's a cliche, dating all the way from 1971. "Be here now." (I have a well-worn 1972 edition of the book.)

The book, though, actually doesn't talk a whole lot about the simple act of embracing the present moment as much as possible. Rather, it's filled with a bunch of Eastern mysticism/yoga philosophizing that I used to find appealing, but don't anymore.

What I do agree with is that now is a treasure that shouldn't be frittered away by paying undue attention to the past and future.

Sure, we have to be aware of what's happened in the past and what might happen in the future. That's a big part of being human. Memories and anticipations are part of our present-moment awareness. Meaning, everything we experience is now -- because we can't exist in the past or future, only now.

I need a reminder of this. So frequently I say to myself, "Don't know. Live now." 

Why do I add don't know? Wouldn't live now be sufficient to keep me centered in the present? Perhaps. I just find it helpful to keep in mind that what I think might happen, which is the foundation of both my disagreeable worries and pleasant hopes, is often (or usually) markedly different from what does happen.

Right now Oregon is under a snow state of emergency issued by Governor Kate Brown. The National Weather Service is forecasting between three and eight inches during today and tomorrow in the Willamette Valley, where I live.

This is a pretty big deal for holiday travelers, since snowfall will be much greater at higher elevations where passes in the Coast Range and Cascade mountains are. It's also worrisome for my wife and me who live in a rural area with a steep driveway and roads that aren't plowed.

Also, last February the Willamette Valley suffered through a devastating ice storm. Our electricity was out for twelve days. That wasn't fun, to put it mildly.

So it's understandable that when some significant snowfall was forecast in the next few days, and maybe into next week, I started getting PTSD-like anxiety about our electricity going off again, with all of the hassles that entails.

However, i'm finding that reminding myself, "Don't know. Live now," is helping to keep that anxiety at a manageable level.

After all, the National Weather Service is saying that because the approaching front isn't a solid mass of precipitation, but unstable air made up of a bunch of cells, snow amounts can vary considerably from place to place, even if those places are close to each other.

In short, what's going to happen the next few days is uncertain -- which is how life often is. Or even, usually is. 

Back in February my wife and I were watching TV when the electricity went out at about this time of night. We just finished watching several episodes of Ted Lasso before we took a TV break to do some other things, like me finishing this blog post.

It's quite unlikely that our electricity will go out tonight, since it hasn't even started snowing at our house yet. Thus I might as well live now, enjoying our evening, rather than worrying about what could happen electricity-wise. 

I've done everything possible to prepare for snow and cold weather. Vent covers are in. My AWD Subaru with its winter tires is parked at the top of our driveway. I bought some extra groceries last week. So why not relax into don't know?

Don't know is a marvelous thing to keep in mind. Most of us dislike not knowing. We prefer to believe that we have a good idea of what will happen, because that relieves our anxiety about the unknown. But actually I feel better when I embrace don't know rather than push it away.

In 2017 I wrote a blog post about this, "Wu chi" and "don't know" go nicely together.

It's funny (I mean, interesting) when you read a book and only one sentence sticks with you. I figure that if I remember it after many years, that sentence must have a significant meaning for me.

A meaningful sentence I recall from one of Huston Smith's books came from a Zen practitioner: "I have a new koan: I could be wrong." 

Beautiful! 

I'm wrong all the time. So I can totally identify with this sentiment. 

Lately I've been enjoying using a similar idea as a sort of mantra when I'm going to sleep at night and find that my mind is overly filled with thoughts of what be coming next in the world of politics, my own life, and other aspects of reality I care about.

Don't know. 

It feels really honest and refreshing to silently repeat those words inside my head. Don't know replaces the guesses, predictions, suppositions, hopes, anticipations, and such that otherwise would be rambling around my psyche.

Now, I'm not saying that looking into the future is bad. We human beings have a marvelous ability to create visions of what might be that are far beyond what other animals are capable of.

It's often useful to fashion scenarios of what Time may bring us after the present moment. However, predictions of what will happen beyond a few minutes, or even less, often are widely off the mark.

That's why don't know appeals to me so much.

Those two words remind me to remain open to anything and everything, really. No matter how confident I am that this or that will occur, the universe typically doesn't operate precisely (or even generally) in accord with my view of what will be.

Naturally don't know applies to grand cosmic anticipations as well as small mundane ones. 

Religious believers, of whom I used to be one, typically have a clear sense of what will happen after they die. Heaven, God, afterlife, soul travel, reincarnation -- whatever it is, something predictable awaits.

But actually, they don't know. No one knows. Which is to say, as the above-mentioned Zen practitioner said: We all could be wrong. And likely are, when it comes to supernatural suppositions. 

 

Here's our 2021 Christmas letter

I don't believe in God.

But I do believe in Christmas letters, even with the word "Christ" in Christmas. However, my wife and I prefer to call it a Holiday Greetings, in part because some years I don't write it before Christmas.

This year, though, I was amazingly early -- a secular Christmas miracle. 

The theme is how an asterisk should have accompanied our usual reply of "Fine" to the query of store employees, "How're you doing?" In our Holiday Greetings we add the asterisk: Fine*

Here it is in both PDF and JPEG formats.
Download 2021 Christmas Letter PDF

I get a mysterious package. Ideas about it welcomed.

Almost everybody likes a good mystery. I sure do. My fiction book reading is almost entirely in the genre of spy/espionage/counterterrorism novels, which involve a lot of intrigue.

So I thought I'd outsource to readers of this blog the contents of a mysterious package that arrived in the mail yesterday. If you have an idea about the meaning of what was sent to me, share it in a comment on this post.

Here's the envelope I got.  What caught my attention right away was the address and return address both being my address. My razor-sharp mind concluded, Whoever sent this to me doesn't want to be identified.

(CIA, I'm waiting for your call recruiting me as an intelligence analyst.)

Inside the envelope was a book. A book that I wrote back when I was an avid member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a guru-centered spiritual organization with headquarters in India.

It was the first 1999 edition of the book, whose central theme was the karmic rationale for vegetarianism.

I thumbed through the pages, looking for any markings or messages. Nothing popped out at me. Of course, I know that spies can encode information in a microdot as small as a period, but I'm not about to inspect every period with a magnifying glass.

(Ooh, just remembered that I should have worn gloves, since a deadly nerve agent could have been put on the book. Looks like I won't be hearing from the CIA after all.)

In addition to the book, the package contained two wooden crosses, one kind of large and the other very small.

The larger cross has "Jerusalem" on the back. The small cross has "Jerusalem" on the front. No way to tell, of course, whether the crosses actually came from Jerusalem.

The tracking number showed that the package was mailed from Nashville, Tennessee. 

Like I said, a mystery. Someone spent $10.30, plus the cost of the book and the crosses, to send me a message. But I don't know what that message is.

Naturally the thought came to mind that the sender is a Christian who thinks I need some Jesus in my life. Maybe the fact that after the book's title page, there's this Bible passage, shows I could be receptive to this.

Be not deceived;
God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
      GALATIANS 6:7

But if this was a proselytizing message, why not say so directly? And why mix together a book I wrote about karma and vegetarianism with two Christian crosses? 

Anyway, its nice to know that someone seemingly cares enough about my (nonexistent) soul to go to the trouble of sending me the package.

Like I said, if anyone has a theory about what the contents mean, share your idea in a comment.

Health problems are a window into how our minds work

Yesterday I got a probable diagnosis of glaucoma, an eye disease. I wrote about this in a post on my HinesSight blog, "Not so fun day: I probably have glaucoma."

One bit of good news is that this was detected in an early stage, since I get an annual eye exam because I wear contact lenses and am severely nearsighted.

Another aspect of getting the likely diagnosis is that it's given me an opportunity to observe how my mind has been dealing with the news. Which really is just another way of saying, How I have been dealing with the news, since there's really no difference between my mind and me.

Everybody is different. But I suspect my mind works in much the same way as many other human minds. Here's a rundown of some of the central themes that have been running through my head since yesterday afternoon.

Could be worse. A glaucoma web site informed me that going blind (quite unlikely in my case) ranks #3 in people's medical fears after cancer and heart disease. However, the survey dates from 2002, before Covid. 

I've been recalling what a promoter of Stoicism said in a talk I listened to a while back: "Your life is someone else's dream life." His point, which makes good sense, is that no matter how bad off you are, out there in the world are people who would gladly trade your problems for theirs.

So while I'd prefer not to have what appears to be glaucoma, I'd be a lot more disturbed if I'd gotten a serious cancer diagnosis, or told I needed major heart surgery. Of course, I'd be happier if I'd gotten a common cold diagnosis. I just prefer to look on the bright side as much as possible.

Get the facts. When I got home after seeing an ophthalmologist that my optometrist had referred me to, my first thought was that I didn't want to do any Googling of "glaucoma." But that soon was followed by a second thought, Why not? 

In general, I'm a believer that knowing more about a medical problem is better than knowing less. Sure, you can overdo being an Internet M.D. Searching out basic information made me feel better, though, because the flip side of my Could be worse frame of mind is visualizing just that: the worst.

Since glaucoma can lead to blindness, in my more frantic moments my mind would picture what it'd be like to be sightless. Not a pleasant prospect, especially since I enjoy writing and reading so much. So it was good to read "with early diagnosis and modern treatment, blindness is very uncommon."

Some thinking is good, some is bad. There's a fine line between pondering what I need to do to deal productively with what appears to be a glaucoma diagnosis, and allowing my mind to obsess about this. 

I've tried to be gentle with myself, realizing that it only has been a bit more than 24 hours since an eye doctor told me my test results were "suspicious of glaucoma." This was a shock to me, though my optometrist had raised the possibility a few weeks earlier. 

What I've had to do today is tamp down repetitive worries that don't lead anywhere positive, while engaging in thinking that will help me -- like trying to figure out why I'm not able to set up online access to the two clinics where my optometrist and ophthalmologist work so I can ask them questions that way.

Often my mind seems to operate with the crazy rule of "Worrying about a bad thing will stop it from happening." Actually, I've found that most things I worry about happening don't, while other problems pop up as a complete surprise.

If the goal is to be happy, be happy now, not later. A corollary to the observation above is that today I found myself on a late afternoon dog walk having thoughts along the line of, "If I couldn't see very well, it wouldn't be as much fun to go on a walk with our dog."

But then it'd dawn on me that right now I'm seeing just fine, and I'm on a walk with our dog. So I should be happy doing that, not worrying about how I might be less happy at some point in the future. Sure, that's possible. Yet so are countless other things, most of which can't be predicted.

In my saner moments I'd realize that life is uncertain. I don't have a heart problem. However, until recently, I didn't have a glaucoma problem. So what if I had a totally unexpected fatal heart attack while I was on a dog walk, worrying about my eyes rather than enjoying the walk.

I wouldn't want my last thought to be an unnecessary worry. Or, a worry that I had been worrying too much. As I recall I said in a recent post, if we make our moments pleasant, those moments will produce pleasant minutes, hours, days, and years.

Of course, that's an ideal. More realistic is to do our best to make our moments pleasant, understanding that some will be unpleasant. That increases the odds that if something bad happens to us, it will have been preceded -- and hopefully followed -- by good times.

Risk-taking is largely a personal decision

Writing a few days ago about how walking on the edge of a roof is great mindfulness training got me thinking in a couple of related directions.

One is that how risky something is usually is a combination of objective fact and subjective interpretation. The other is that the first thing I did after coming up with the name for this blog back in 2004, was decide on a subtitle.

Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence

The two ideas are related, in my own mind at least. I want people to make an informed decision about what sort of spirituality, if any, to pursue. To some extent that means looking at whatever facts exist about the spiritual options that most appeal to them.

But it also means that after looking at the same facts, various people are almost certainly going to interpret those facts in different ways. 

This seems to be a universal feature of human nature.

Even in science, our most objective way of knowing reality, scientists engage in passionate disputes about how to view the same facts. Quantum theory, for example, is amazingly accurate in describing goings-on in the world of the very small. Yet there's no consensus among physicists as to how to interpret those goings-on.

(The "shut up and calculate" crowd even denies a need for interpretation.)

So I believe in allowing people a lot of latitude in how they decide to live their life, with the proviso that whatever decisions they come to aren't forced on others without good reason -- which typically is the role of government and elected officials.

Circling back to me walking on the edge of our roof to clean our gutters with a backpack leaf blower, I feel that I've thought out the pros and cons of this during the 25 years or so I've been doing this a half dozen or so times a year. 

However, I also totally understand why someone -- such as my wife -- thinks this is an unwise thing to do. Partly she feels this way because Laurel has a different risk tolerance than I do.

I should add, physical risk tolerance.

Laurel is wonderfully gutsy when it comes to standing up for what she believes is right, even if she's in a decided minority, which happens fairly often with our neighborhood association where she's been a board member for many years. And my wife was a psychotherapist in private practice where she had to deal with domestically violent men and volatile family counseling situations.

Yet when I decided to get a motorcycle soon after we got married in 1990, my dream of us going off together on it vanished when, after one ride on our local street, she started yelling "slow down!" when I got up to 25 mph.

After that, I rode alone.

Which also was the case when in 2009, at the age of 60, I decided to get a 650 cc Suzuki Burgman scooter after selling the motorcycle after a couple of years. Numerous people advised me not to ride around on two motorized wheels, especially at my age.

Me on my scooter

That led me to write a blog post, "Older motorcycle riders, don't be scared by statistics."

Thus the risk of riding a motorcycle or scooter can be reduced by about 50% just by not being stupid, inattentive, or figuring that your handling skills are better than they really are.

Doing the sorts of common-sense risk-reduction things I mentioned above cuts down on the chance of gettting in an accident even further. However, no matter how careful a rider is, there's no getting around the fact that driving on two wheels is going to be more dangerous than getting around in a four-wheeled "cage" (as motorcyclists like to refer to cars).

Also, a lot more fun.

Which is why I ride, along with most motorcyclists and scooterers -- aside from those who can't afford a car and simply need a low cost means of transportation.

Back when I worked in health planning and policy research I became acquainted with the notion of balancing the quality and quantity of life. This often comes into play with living wills, where a person has to indicate how he or she feels about this sort of tradeoff.

Most people consider that extending the sheer quantity of life via time spent hooked up to a respirator, feeding tube, and such isn't worth the suffering and distress if one's quality of life is dirt-poor.

Similarly, virtually everybody is willing to take some risks in order to get more enjoyment out of life. Whether it is horseback riding, bicycling, getting on an airplane, or even driving to the weekly meeting of a knitting circle, doing something rewarding entails some risk-taking.

Again, this applies to both physical and non-physical risks. A stand-up comic is at very low risk of being physically injured while on stage, but they run a very high risk of being emotionally injured if their audience doesn't laugh, starts booing, or yelling out insults.

How many people are willing to take that risk? Not many. Yet I love stand-up comedy and applaud anyone willing to have the courage to open themselves up to that sort of potential ridicule. 

Again, everybody is different.

Some people would rather have a root canal than speak in public. Others adore public speaking. They simply have different risk tolerances for the same activity. When I see another gray-haired/bearded old guy on a motorcycle, I think, "Way to go, man." Followed by, "I sure wish I still had my Burgman scooter."

Recently I saw a TV news story about an 82 year old man who took up pole vaulting again after an unremarkable high school career with the sport. He's cleared 9 feet, 1 inch, a record for his age group. Falling from nine feet, even onto a mat, has to be sort of risky for someone his age. 

But he's enjoying pole vaulting.

Isett is the nation's best pole vaulter in his age group — and pretty much the only pole vaulter in his age group. He picked up the sport — for a second time — at age 66, five decades after an unremarkable high school career. 

"It's fun," he said. "It's like going to high school again with nothing to study." 

He has nothing to study but the physics of gravitational potential energy —  and pain management. But Isett said it's worth the aches. 

"It's a rush, exhilaration, when you clear a bar," he said. 

At a meet last year, Isett cleared 9 feet, 1 inch. No octogenarian has ever done such a thing. 

"What he does is absolutely insane," another teenager at the gym said. 

Isett said he's not done setting records. He told CBS News he plans to stay fit and keep at this until he's 6 feet under. 

Walking on the edge of a roof is great mindfulness training

Even though lots of people believe otherwise, we are physical beings living in a physical world.

(If you disagree, share your factual evidence in a comment on this post. Hey, maybe a Nobel prize awaits you if you're able to prove that we're non-physical beings living in a physical world, or maybe two Nobel prizes if you can prove we're non-physical beings living in a non-physical world.)

One reason I enjoy Zen Buddhism so much is that Zen is deeply rooted in physicality.

Chop wood, carry water. Focus on the breath while keeping the spine straight in meditation. Students getting hit with a stick by their Zen teacher.

Mindfulness appeals to me for the same reason.

Sure, mindfulness obviously involves the mind. But what we're mindful of is both the world outside of us, along with our inner world. The two are so intimately connected as to be one thing, really.

After all, what we're not aware of doesn't exist for us, though if it is a physical entity, it still exists in the reality outside of our own mind.

There's lots of ways to appreciate the benefits of mindfulness, which basically is simply being aware of what we're doing while we're doing it -- understanding that doing can include non-volitional acts like thoughts and emotions that arise without us choosing them.

Today I cleaned the gutters on our house and detached garage/carport.

They were filled with leaves after a windy period last week helped the many large oaks that surround us do their fall thing. Quite a bit of rain is forecast for the next seven days or so. Today was dry, so this was my opportunity. 

At my age, 73, I get frequent advice to stay off our roof, including from my wife. I'm pleased to ignore that advice. One reason is that I learn a lot about mindfulness from clearing the gutters out.

I do this by propping a ladder against the roof, which I climb with my Stihl backpack leaf blower on my back, not surprisingly. I start it on the ground and get up on the roof with it idling away. My wife left for a trip to Kentucky today to attend a Celebration of Life for her oldest sister, who died recently.

I thought about not cleaning the gutters until Laurel gets back, since we live in the country and our house isn't visible from the road. So if I fell off the roof and couldn't move, it would be a while before someone found me.

But then I realized that I'd been cleaning our gutters numerous times a year with a leaf blower for over 25 years, so the chance of me falling off today was minimal. 

If anything, I felt safer today, because I walked along the edge of our roofs -- which are two story in places -- with a bit more mindful attitude than usual. Because I was by myself, aside from our dog, I paid extra attention to what I was doing, every step of the way.

Recently I'd read a mention of how, if we take care of every moment, those moments add up to a good hour, day, week, year, and lifetime. Problem is, often we aren't really present in the moments that make up our life.

Our body is in one place -- the present moment -- while our mind is someplace else, the past or future, or thoughts unrelated to what we're doing. 

However, walking along the edge of a roof with a leaf blower on your back is a great way to practice being wholly in the present moment. Well, actually that started as I climbed our ladder, since getting on the roof with a leaf blower tube dangling to one side, with the weight of the machine on your back, presents a few extra challenges.

I find that simply being aware of what my body is doing as I take each step up the ladder, then focusing on getting from the ladder to the roof isn't difficult at all.

That's the benefit of doing something somewhat dangerous: it concentrates the mind in a way that tends to escape us in everyday activities. Getting close enough to the edge of the roof so the debris in the gutters can be blown out by the leaf blower is even more concentrating.

Today my approach was to continuously visualize myself losing my balance. That took away any lingering bit of nervousness by cleaning the gutters without anyone else around. I was aware that all I had to do was collapse straight down onto the roof and I'd be fine.

The key to doing that was being aware of what my body was doing at every moment, not letting my attention stray onto thoughts of what I'd do after this chore was completed.

An example of non-mindfulness arose later in the day around sunset. I was doing some stretching  exercises while watching TV after the sun had set. Looking out the window, I was struck by how cool the trees around our house looked in silhouette as darkness neared.

I grabbed my iPhone and went out onto our side deck. Along with our main deck, it's in the process of being replaced with a composite deck, since we'd gotten tired of maintaining wood boards with staining every few years.

Some caution tape was hanging from the sliding door that leads to the deck, since railings hadn't been installed yet. Even so, as I was looking for the best angle to take a photo, in the dark I unconsciously started moving toward the railless edge of the deck.

Fortunately, a little voice in my head said, "You fool, there's no railing!"

That taught me what I already knew, but all too often forget: mindfulness isn't just for doing obviously dangerous things; it's also for doing ordinary things, some of which can be dangerous if done mindlessly.

Anyway, I got the photo. If I'd fallen off the deck and broken my neck, it would have made for a good human interest story. "Old man dies while taking a photo, forgetting his deck under construction had no railing." 

Always trying to improve yourself is foolish

This morning I meditated, as I always do. Via my iPhone I also listened to a Buddhist speak about Buddhist teachings, as I sometimes do. 

What surprised me, sort of, is that afterwards I felt somewhat worse. It was as if trying to improve myself led to me feeling like I'd temporarily gone backward on the improvement front. 

As soon as I went back to simply living my life -- having lunch, going grocery shopping, listening to CNN and MSNBC as I drove around in my car -- my mood improved.

For quite a while I've been toying with the idea that engaging in a never-ending spiritual search for more... more self-awareness, more control of my emotions, more mindfulness, more knowledge of how my mind works, all that is akin to running on a hamster wheel of self-improvement. 

Meaning, when I'm always trying to get somewhere better than where I am now, I'm missing the opportunity to be satisfied with the present moment.

Obviously this isn't a groundbreaking insight. It's common sense that's been echoed by many people much wiser than myself. Today I simply had a stronger feeling that I need to break free of the habit that was with me for the 35 years I was a religious believer, Eastern religion variety.

The habit of considering that there always was another step to be taken on the spiritual path, another flight of stairs to be climbed on my ascent to the spiritual heights. 

Though I've been able to leave behind most of the religiosity that used to be so important to me, the desire to keep searching for greater levels of meaning, happiness, and contentment never left me. But more and more, I'm getting used to the idea of not needing more. 

This is hard to describe.

It's not like I'm becoming fatalistic or uncaring. I still have many goals that I want to pursue. I'm dedicated to trying to make the world a better place. I'm committed to remaining a good husband, father, grandfather, friend.

However, I can do all that without feeling like some essence within me needs to improve. After a lifetime of studying the world's religious, philosophical, and mystical writings, along with daily meditation for up to several hours a day, there's really nothing new that I need to learn or experience in the realm of "spirituality." 

(I put that word in quotation marks because it doesn't capture what I am getting at, but it's the best word I can come up with.)

It's a relief to just settle into the life that I've living, instead of feeling there's a better life awaiting me around some corner.

For many years I've been saying on this blog that mindfulness has become my meditation. That's still true. It's just that even mindfulness can become a chore, an exercise to get better at, instead of simply attending to what's happening right here, right now without viewing that as mindfulness.

If what I've said in this post doesn't make sense, here's some previous posts on this theme, along with an excerpt from each. Maybe they'll help explain what I'm trying to get at here.

Ending the spiritual search

Always looking for more from life than what life already is giving me is beginning to seem unwise. 

More meaning. More happiness. More purpose. More depth. All that more, more, more seems to lead to a hamster-wheel sort of existence.

Spiritual seeking can become such a habit, the seeker doesn't realize that they're going around and around without really getting anywhere.

If we're in an endless loop of seek-find-seek-find, the way out is to either stop seeking or find that which satisfies completely. 

Since I'm not completely satisfied with life (who is?), it seems to me that giving up a quest to make life into something that it isn't already is the best way to go.

End of spiritual questions is the final answer

I've experienced that sort of who cares? clarity now and then. Sometimes life seems so simple, so fine just the way it is, yet also so mysterious, so impossible to comprehend. I grok that there's no answer to life's biggest spiritual, religious, and philosophical questions -- because there's no way to form a cogent query.

And a little while later I order another spiritual, religious, or philosophical book from Amazon -- because searching for answers to unanswerable questions is just so darn much fun.

Great quotes from "Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: a Zen Guide."

"It's a little harder for most people to realize that not only is the mind that I'm trying to escape the only mind I have, but that the mind that I'm seeking is also the mind that I already have. The perfection that we're so busy pursuing is to be found nowhere but right here in the very moment, regardless of its content. This is the most basic spiritual insight that we can have. This moment is it! What we've desperately been seeking is already here."

Happy birthday to me, from me

It's my birthday tomorrow. I'll be a super-young 73, using my personal definition of super-young.

(I'm reading a humorous book about growing older -- Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old --  that says two answers to the question "When does old begin?" are "Old age is my current age +4" and "Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Never today.)

At any rate, I'm in pretty good shape. As evidence I present this photo of me in the Big Meadow at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where my wife and I own a 1/4 share in a vacation home. That's Black Butte in the background, a pleasingly extinct volcano.

My mother died at 73. But she was an alcoholic who didn't exercise much, smoked a lot her entire life, didn't eat very healthily, and suffered several strokes well before she was my age. She would have been much better off smoking marijuana rather than tobacco; sadly, cannabis legalization came too late for her, but in time for me.

So by comparison, I'm doing pretty damn well.

And even though I've only just started reading the book linked to above, it's encouraging that I've been able to avoid some of the stupid things the author advises old folks to avoid. Like, double-spacing after periods, which made sense in the age of manual typewriters but not today, and not using an AOL or Yahoo email address. 

(I was an early adopter of Gmail. Sadly, though, another Brian Hines was an even earlier adopter, so I've had to make do with [email protected] while I wait for my namesake who doesn't need to use a number after his name to die and bequeath me his email address. Hey, I can dream.)

I guess I should try to come up with some philosophical wisdom to justify a Church of the Churchless blog post about my impending birthday.

Well, comparing current me with younger me, I'd say that the biggest change in how I view myself in relation to the universe is that I no longer am nearly as grandiose. Meaning, I used to believe that one day I'd be privy to the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.

Through all the daily meditation I did since 1970, and the guidance of an Indian guru, my consciousness would soar to higher regions of reality and I'd know divine secrets that other unenlightened souls could only dream of comprehending. Of course, I also was proud of my humility.

Now, my goal is to be able to remember for as long as possible how the three remote controls for our television, Apple TV, and DirecTV satellite receiver work together so I can continue to perform my manly duty of taking charge of our evening viewing of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and other streaming services.

Thus far, I'm handling all that with senior citizen technological perfection. Plus, I can make my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro function well (except when they don't, but then it's Apple's fault, in my own mind at least).

One of the best things about growing old is that you don't worry nearly as much about attaining grand milestones.

Maybe I'll write another book someday, but I'm fine with the four books I've already written. My wife and I have been married for 31 years. I'm much happier than I was in my 18-year first marriage, so there's no pressure to work on our relationship, though I've got work to do on loading the dishwasher the way Laurel likes.

I still go to three Tai Chi classes a week -- Tai Chi has been a part of my life for 17 years -- and work out at a gym three times also. However, I'm good with maintaining the weights I'm currently capable of lifting, while in my younger days I was always trying to handle heavier weights.

I guess this is part of life after 70.

You have a more realistic perspective. You grasp that if you can just keep on doing what you enjoy doing for as long as possible, that's plenty good enough. I want to make the world better insofar as I can. However, I don't expect that the fate of the world, the United States, Oregon, Salem, or our neighborhood in any way depends on me.

That said, every day I drive by about a hundred acres of farmland just north of our neighborhood that was slated to become a subdivision before my wife and I led a complex, costly, five-year fight to stop it because all those houses would have threatened our neighborhood wells and the springs that feed a community lake.

That successful effort taught me the value of doing concrete things in this physical world, rather than wasting time on religious imaginings of what a supposed supernatural realm might be like. Stopping the bulldozers was hugely more fulfilling than pretending I was a spiritual being destined for life in "heaven" (Eastern religion variety).

Anyway, these are my birthday eve thoughts. My wife just finished baking a birthday cake, so tomorrow evening will be devoted more to my stomach and less to my mind. 

Life is uncertain

Might as well share a post I just wrote for my HinesSight blog. Here's how I introduced it on Facebook.

l'm feeling kind of philosophical. (OK, a common feeling fof me.) Decided to write about how life only is predictable when looking backward, and not even then, really, because the events that seemed to cause our life to turn out a certain way could easily have been different. I use how my wife and I met as an example of how uncertain life can be.

 

https://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2021/09/life-is-only-predictable-looking-backward.html

Our bad qualities also are our good qualities

Yesterday I finished a 2,500 word essay for the consideration of 180 Medical, the firm that supplies me with urinary catheters. After I got a message from 180 Medical saying that they welcome essays about how people experience using a catheter, I wrote back saying I'm interested in this, having written a bunch of blog posts about my life with a catheter.
Download 180 Medical essay PDF

(I've also copied in the essay below.)

A marketing specialist with 180 Medical read some of those posts and suggested I write about my catheter-related depression and anxiety. It took me quite a while to get around to this, since it required dredging up memories that I've tried to suppress as much as possible.

But what I realized when I finally felt the urge to write about my depression/anxiety, along with what led up to it, is the power of being real, of speaking honestly, of recognizing painful facts. I didn't plan out what to write. I didn't make an outline. I simply started writing from the heart, letting what was inside me manifest in words on a screen as directly as possible.

Almost all of us want to present a positive face to the world. We like to display our positive qualities and hide our negative qualities. That's one reason I waited almost six months before I wrote what I said in February of this year I'd send to 180 Medical. 

I doubt that anyone who reads this will take me up on this offer, but I'll make it regardless. Share the biggest mistake you've made in your life in a comment. Or one of the biggest. Ideally, post it using your real name. Put it out there for the world to see. Then be aware of what happens.

If you're like me, you'll feel a weight lifted from your mind. It takes energy to keep the Good Me and Bad Me separate, at least insofar as how we reveal ourselves to other people. We're in a never-ending quest to make the story of our life seen by others appear with us as the Good Guy/Gal rather than the Bad Guy/Gal.

Yet it seems to me that our good qualities also are our bad qualities. They really aren't separate and distinct. I got to thinking about this after writing the essay. I walked out of an urgent care center, even though I should have gotten medical attention, for much the same reason that I've been successful in other areas of my life.

For example, I'm optimistic. I like to challenge authority. I enjoy going my own way. 

Sometimes those qualities lead to positive outcomes. Sometimes they don't. However, I can't split myself into two halves. I'm one person, with a mixture of qualities, abilities, tendencies, habits, ways of being in the world. The same me who screws up is the same me who succeeds.

Here's the essay. 

---------------------------

My catheter-related depression and anxiety
by Brian Hines
[email protected]

I wish I didn’t have to use a catheter to urinate. I wish I hadn’t made mistakes that may have caused my bladder to become dysfunctional, leading me to need a catheter. I wish I hadn’t suffered from so much anxiety and depression during the four and a half years I’ve been a catheter user.

But wishes are one thing. Reality is another. I’m going to be real with you. 

If you’re looking for a feel-good story of how a 72 year-old man has been coping with his catheterizing, look somewhere else. Sure, now I’m doing pretty well with my catheterizing. This wasn’t always the case, though. So i’m not going to sugarcoat those hard times.

In a movie about the life of C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands, a student tells Lewis, “We read to know that we are not alone.” 

My hope is that some people who also have had problems with using a catheter will read this and realize that even though our struggles mostly are private, we share a determination to make the best of a difficult situation. 

Up until the age of 68, I had no significant health problems. My family doctor would tell me at my annual checkup, “You’re a poster child for growing old.” I’d earned a karate black belt at age 56. I’d take my boogie board on vacations to Maui and catch big waves with the locals. I took up senior citizen skateboarding when I was 64.

I figured, wrongly, that I had many more years of good health ahead of me.

Yes, I had a prostate problem. It didn’t seem like a big deal, though. I took several prostate medications. I needed to urinate more frequently, getting up several times a night. I always got an aisle seat on airplanes to ease a trip to the restroom. 

Looking back, I should have realized that I needed to see a urologist. It became more difficult for me to start peeing, a different problem than having to pee too often. Yet I didn’t mention this to my family doctor. I thought I was just having normal symptoms of an enlarged prostate. 

Then everything changed in May 2017. My wife and I went to visit an old friend who I hadn’t seen in over 40 years. We drove to the Bend area from a vacation cabin we owned with three other families in Camp Sherman, Oregon.

Before getting to his house, I thought about stopping to pee. But I didn’t need to go that bad, so I drove on. Once we got there, our conversation on a deck overlooking the beautiful Deschutes River was so pleasant, I didn’t want to interrupt it by going to the bathroom.

When I finally did, I couldn’t go. Since this had happened before, I figured I just needed to wait a while and try again. Except, I kept trying every half hour or so, until someone asked why I was visiting the bathroom so much. 

This went on until mid-afternoon. By then I really needed to pee, but still couldn’t. My friend and his girlfriend told me that this was serious and I needed to get medical help. Good advice, which I didn’t take.

Well, actually I did, sort of. We Googled the address of an urgent care center in Bend. Driving there, I peed in my pants involuntarily. Luckily, I’d brought along some extra clothes.

I changed in the urgent care restroom, then saw a male nurse who asked what my problem was. “I can’t urinate,” I said. “At least, not voluntarily.” For some reason he wanted a urine sample. “Um,” I told him, “I can’t pee, so that’s not going to happen.” 

He gave me a glass. “Drink three glasses of water,” he said. “Then try to urinate into this bottle.” I should have argued with him, but I didn’t. I sat in the room by myself and drank the water. Then went into a bathroom and couldn’t urinate.

By that time I was distraught. I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t pee on my own but had wet my pants. I was frustrated, tired, fed up. Holding the empty collection bottle in my hand, I walked out and told a different nurse that I wanted to leave.

“Do you want a catheter,” she asked me. 

I didn’t know what a catheter was. I didn’t care what a catheter was. I just wanted to go back to our cabin, take our dog for a walk, and wait until I could pee on my own again. Yeah, none of that makes sense. But at the time it did, because I was so upset with how the day had gone.

“No,” I told her. “All right,” she said. “You’ll need to sign a release form absolving us of responsibility for letting you leave without treatment.” Big danger sign, in retrospect. Yet I scribbled my name on the form.

The memory of what happened in the urgent care center is as fresh today as it was four and a half years ago. I agonize over that single word that came out of my lips, “No.” What if I had said “Yes”? Why didn’t I say “Yes”? One word. One little word. Choosing one word over another may have changed my life for the worse, forever.

We drove back to the cabin. I involuntarily peed in my pants again. After all, I’d just drunk three glasses of water in the urgent care center, when I already had been unable to urinate for about ten hours.

That night I keep getting up to see if I could pee. I couldn’t. The pain was bad. As soon as the sun was up I told my wife, “I need to get medical help.” We packed up and drove two hours to Salem. I peed in my pants again. A Salem Health urgent care nurse sent me to the Emergency Room.

There I got an indwelling catheter. Several weeks later, still unable to urinate much on my own, I was told that I’d have to do intermittent catheterization. Which I still am.

Several months after my traumatic urinary retention episode, I asked my urologist if my atonic, nonfunctioning bladder would have gotten back to the way it was if I’d said “Yes” to the offer of a catheter in the Bend urgent care center.

He said, “Perhaps.” I held it together until I got into my car. Then I cried all the way home. 

Almost every day since, I’ve thought about how stupid it was of me to refuse the offer of a catheter. I should have asked what a catheter was. I should have asked what would happen if I didn’t get the massive amount of urine in my bladder out. But I didn’t. And I can’t stop blaming myself for that. 

My wife is a retired psychotherapist. She thinks I have PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s probably right. However, it didn’t take long before I had an even worse mental problem: depression. 

(If you’re mildly depressed yourself reading this sorrowful tale, hang in there. It’s going to end on a positive note, once I get through the anxiety and depression stuff.)

I already wasn’t happy, to put it mildly, about facing a lifelong need to insert a plastic tube up up my urethra five times a day. When I started getting nighttime leg cramps, forcing me to wake up and walk around my bedroom until they went away, then doing this again a few hours later all night long, the lack of sleep helped push me into a full-blown depression. 

Not fun. At first I just thought I was tired. And sad about my non-functional bladder. Then my wife said, “No, you’re depressed.” She was right. 

I had no interest in doing things I used to enjoy, like write posts for my three blogs. From being afraid of dying, I started to think that, hey, death wouldn’t be so bad. At least I’d be free of feeling like I was in an emotional black hole with no exit sign.

My urologist’s office said there was no way the leg cramps could be related to my bladder problem. I pointed out that I’d never had leg cramps before, and now I did, shortly after starting to use a catheter. 

Fortunately, I was able to see a Sleep Clinic physician. After being prescribed gabapentin, the leg cramps went away. I also was fortunate that my primary care doctor’s office had a psychiatric nurse practitioner. She diagnosed me with Major Depression, Single Episode. 

So I now had a mental health diagnosis to add to my growing list of physical problems. I was prescribed an antidepressant, which over several months helped me climb out of the black hole I was in, along with counseling sessions with a social worker.

Depression was in my rear view mirror. Unfortunately, catheter-related anxiety was in the passenger seat right next to me, where it still sits. Worse, sometimes anxiety feels like it’s taken my place in the drivers’s seat — though gradually I’ve gotten better at keeping anxiety’s hands off of my mental steering wheel.

I don’t know whether the frequent trouble I have getting a catheter to pass into my bladder is typical for many men, or atypical. Regardless, this has been my biggest longstanding problem. 

In the early days I’d call my urology clinic and talk with the nurses who worked with my doctor. “I’m having trouble inserting the catheter,” I’d say. “Do you have any tips?” I’d be told to take a shower, go for a walk, or wait a while and then try again.

OK, but I wanted to get back to what I’d been doing before my bladder stopped working like it should. Eating out. Going to a movie. Visiting friends. If I went into a restroom at a restaurant to do my catheter thing, then found I couldn’t insert it, obviously taking a shower wasn’t an option.

And I didn’t want to interrupt a meal with friends by saying, “Sorry, I’ve got to go for a walk and then see if I can get a catheter into my bladder.” Not exactly a great dinner conversation topic.

Not being able to insert a catheter at bedtime was the worst. I was tired. I wanted to sleep. I needed to urinate. Yet sometimes I’d spend an hour or more lying on the bed, trying to relax with breathing exercises, so the damn catheter would pass into my bladder.

To make a long story short — and this story really is long — at times I got extremely frustrated and angry. My wife had to put up with quite a few outbursts where I’d either start crying or slam doors or both, because I was having such a difficult time inserting a catheter. 

I’d try catheters other than the Flex Coude Pro that I’d come to know and love. (Well, except when I couldn’t get it into my bladder.) But none of them were anywhere near as comfortable and easy to use as the Flex Coude Pro, so I stuck with it. 

Eventually I had the bright idea of trying a smaller size catheter, FR12 or FR10 rather than FR14. Often I could insert one of those when the FR14 wouldn’t go in.

Even so, I still am anxious about traveling or going anywhere where I might need to use a public restroom. I haven’t flown since I started using a catheter. I haven’t driven by car more than two hours from where I live. 

If I could be confident that popping in a catheter would go smoothly, I’d be hugely happier. That would allow me to view myself as simply differently-abled in how I pee. However, not knowing when I’ll have trouble inserting a catheter — I haven’t been able to predict when this happens — makes me anxious.

And when I have a particularly difficult time, my mind generates flashbacks to the traumatic day and a half back in May 2017 I’ve described. It must be similar to a war veteran hearing fireworks and feeling like it’s a roadside bomb. When I’m unable to insert a catheter, sometimes I feel panicked, like I did when I couldn’t pee at my friend’s house or in the urgent care center.

However, I don’t want to leave the impression that I’m a total catheter train wreck. I’ve learned a lot over the years. Most days now, things either go smoothly for me, or I’m able to handle occasional problems inserting a catheter with no freakout. 

I’ve accepted the fact that almost certainly I’ll have to use a catheter for the rest of my life. 

My bladder has recovered some function, but nowhere near enough, I strongly suspect, to ever justify prostate surgery. I got a second opinion from a medical school urologist who told me, bluntly, “You don’t have a prostate problem, you have a bladder problem.”

However, I always thought I had a prostate problem. It never occurred to me that my bladder might stop working one day, and my primary care doctor didn’t  bring up this possibility. 

I haven’t stopped regretting walking out of the urgent care center in Bend. However, I do my best to tone down that regret by focusing on a couple of things that allow me to fashion a story which doesn’t have me as the Bad Guy as regards my non-functional bladder.

First, my urologist said that not getting medical care sooner could have harmed my bladder’s ability to recover from the urinary retention episode. Could. This isn’t certain. So regardless of how I acted that day, I might well have still needed to use a catheter.

Second, during a cystoscopy (scoping of my bladder) by the second-opinion urologist, he said, “Look at that pocket in the bladder wall. That was caused by the bladder trying to push urine through your prostate for a long time.”

A long time. Those words imply that my bladder was gradually losing functionality for quite a few years, so slowly that I viewed this as a normal part of aging for a man with a prostate problem.

It’s difficult, but I’m learning to forgive myself. After all, there may not be much to forgive. 

I try to remember that life is difficult for everybody, and I’m more fortunate than many. As my wife frequently reminds me, I’m pretty damn healthy overall. I use a chainsaw on our ten rural acres. I put 40 pound bags of salt in our water softener. I can bicycle, lift weights, do Tai Chi.

Life isn’t over just because I have to use a catheter five times a day. As I’ve described, there were moments when I thought life wasn’t worth living. Now, though, I’m almost as happy as I was before. 

Almost. And that’s good enough for me, especially given the much darker days I went through with my catheter-related depression and anxiety. 

 

A shattered rock teaches me something about a broken life

"Oh, no! Where did the rock go?" I looked out a window of our house and felt an impending sense of doom. 

Quite a few years ago someone we'd hired to do yard work had found an interestingly shaped angular rock about 18 inches tall (our landscaping has lots of rocks). He set up upright on a larger rock, then balanced a small rock on the tip of its decidedly sharp end.

Ever since, I'd carefully replaced the small rock when deer, our dog, strong wind, or some other force dislodged it. But I'd never worried about the larger angular rock.

Until it disappeared.

Well, not really. It was still there. Just in several pieces. The two guys who do our weekly yard maintenance had come on Monday. They'd focused on leaf/debris blowing, since our grass is barely growing in this unusually hot summer. 

(July was the hottest month ever in Salem, Oregon, going all the way back to the late 1800s when temperature records began to be kept. Which shows global warming is happening, and more intensely than expected.)

The guys must have knocked over the angular rock, shattering it on the large rock it was sitting on. When I saw the pieces I felt a strange sense of loss. Sure, it was just a shattered rock. But i really liked it!

Calming down a bit, I began to realize that all was not lost. The rock was still there. Just in pieces. I decided to see if the pieces could form a replacement balance rock. They could, even though the pieces were much smaller than the rock I'd come to love.

The new main rock was a piece of the old rock that shared its basic shape. The original balancing rock fit nicely on top of it. The rock piece below had a great shape, but I hadn't figured out to use it yet. 

Some additional reflecting turned my rock thoughts in a more philosophical direction. 

Life is full of breaking. Broken dreams. Broken relationships. Broken jobs. Broken health. Broken beliefs, religious, political, or otherwise. Broken all kinds of stuff. It's natural to feel bad when we see that part of our life has been shattered.

Hey, we liked our life as it was! Just as I liked the old balance rocks as they were. Thing is, though, we can always do our best to pick up the pieces of our broken life and refashion them into something new. 

Often this isn't easy. It takes time. But usually a new life comes into being that can be almost as satisfying as our old life. Maybe more satisfying. 

I had the bright idea of taking two shattered rock pieces into my office to see if they'd fit in a bonsai planting. I never trim the bonsai, but I water and fertilize it once a week. Amazingly, I've had the bonsai for about three years and haven't managed to kill it yet -- something I used to regularly do with house plants in my younger days.

The rocks sere a nice addition. The figurine of who I think of as a Taoist sage that came with the bonsai seems to approve, even though the balancing rock is poised to fall on his head.

This afternoon I wandered around our yard looking for a larger rock to replace the one that had shattered. I was OK with the smaller pieces, but they were much smaller than the rock I'd gotten used to looking at whenever I walked by.

I found one half buried in dirt. It's a pretty good replacement for Shattered Rock. When it starts raining again, the dirt should wash off.

So now I've got a balancing rock "sculpture" that is about as tall as Shattered Rock, with the bonus of three rocks being part of the sculpture, rather than just two.

And I found a way to use the interesting looking piece, along with two other pieces of Shattered Rock.

Yes, it's much easier to restore a broken balancing rock than to fix broken pieces of a life.

I'm just using Shattered Rock as a metaphor of sorts to remind me, and whoever reads this blog post, that even though it can be really disturbing to have some seemingly solid part of our life fall apart, frequently what replaces that broken part can turn out to be better than the original.

Or at least not much worse.

Here's what gives me pleasure (hint: it isn't religion)

Fairly often I get comments on this blog that amuse me, because they're so wrong. 

Someone will say, "Brian, you're obsessed with... " Bashing religion. Criticizing gurus. Talking trash about Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the religious organization I belonged to for 35 years.

That's laughable. 

Every couple of days I write a post for this blog. It takes me an hour or two. Otherwise I rarely think about the subjects that get discussed here on the Church of the Churchless.

I've got many other things that need attending to, most of which interest me more than the Big Cosmic Questions. Like, my family.

Currently I'm at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where my wife, Laurel, and I own a 1/4 share in a vacation house.

Sunday my daughter Celeste, her husband Patrick, and my granddaughter Evelyn came to visit us here, flying up from southern California and then driving across the mountains from the Portland airport.

Today we rented bicycles for the three of them. Black Butte Ranch has a great system of bike paths, most of them separated from the roads in this beautiful destination resort.

Here's a photo of my daughter and me at Aspen Lake, where we stopped on our afternoon bike ride. (I don't do much smiling in photos, because I don't like my smile.)

Then we stopped for lunch at the charming Black Butte Ranch store. It adjoins the stables where Evelyn went on pony rides when she was much younger than her current age of 14. She still likes horses.

After that we biked to the new Putting Course. It's freaking amazing. Way better than a practice green with a bunch of holes scattered around. The Putting Course has twelve challenging holes. 

Celeste took this photo of me, Patrick, and Evelyn. Laurel decided to bow out of the putting, since it was really hot and sunny today, and she doesn't do well in those conditions, being a blonde of Scandinavian descent.

Since I haven't golfed for well over 25 years, to say my putting was rusty is to insult rust. Almost by accident, I had a few decent putts. But most would have qualified for a video on how not to putt. We had a lot of fun though. 

Then we biked back to our house, stopping along the way to visit with another bunch of horses grazing in Big Meadow. (It really is big, very big). Evelyn made a friend. That's wildfire smoke in the background.

Black Butte was looking good. Patrick plans to climb up it tomorrow. (A road takes you about 2/3 the way up, then you hike.) I've done the climb quite a few times, so will pass on doing it again.)

Then we biked back to our Black Butte Ranch house -- played Scrabble, made corn on the cob plus rice and tofu for dinner, and went for a frisbee-filled dog walk on several holes of a golf course (after golfers had stopped playing. Here's a photo Patrick took of me and Evelyn on a boardwalk that crosses over a wetland area.

So this is what's consuming my attention at the moment. Your regularly scheduled Church of the Churchless programming will resume soon.

My wise advice that I'm not sure I understand

For quite a while a couple of pieces of paper have been sitting by my computer, emblazoned with what I'm sure is very wise advice that I scribbled down. 

Only problem is, it's been so long since I penned those scribbles, the inspiration that I wanted to convey through them has faded. 

But I still grasp the gist of my pithy platitudes. So here they are. (Now I can throw those pieces of paper away... finally!)

Reality is neutral. Pretty straightforward. I'm speaking here of the reality that exists outside of human minds. Which, given the vastness of the universe, is virtually all of reality -- minus the tiny bit that lives inside our brain cavities.

I like this thought because it puts things in perspective. Often we think something like, "The universe really has it in for me today," or "I think the universe is trying to teach me a lesson."

No, and no. Neither is true. Reality doesn't care about anything, including us. Reality is what is. It is we humans who construct positive and negative meanings out of the neutral materials of reality. 

Shakespeare said this in Hamlet:

Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

Our stories should be believable. The inspiration for these words probably came from my wife.

She has a habit, which can be annoying at times, of blurting out while I'm engrossed in a movie or show we're watching on our TV, "That's not realistic." 

(See my blog post, Why my wife's "That's not realistic" drives movie-watching-me crazy.)

Laurel will even do this with animated films. She has a strong desire for things to make sense in a movie or television show. Me, I'm more comfortable with absurdity. 

But when it comes to real life, the stories we tell both about ourselves and the outside world, those stories should be believable. Certainly to ourselves. Ideally to others as well.

Otherwise we end up inhabiting a thinly populated reality, which isn't a sociable way to live.

I am how the world wants me to be. Sometimes I say this to myself when my day isn't going so well, and I'm blaming myself for screwing something up. 

That's usually an unbelievable story I've crafted (see above). 

Why? Because who we are and what happens to us is a massively complex web of interrelationships, causes and effects that extend far beyond the boundary of any particular person.

So I find comfort in the idea that how I am at any given moment is how the world wants me to be. Not in the sense of a conscious wanting, because that isn't how the universe operates. 

Just in the sense of my current state of being reflecting much more than whatever I did a little while ago. That whatever blossomed from seeds planted in a myriad of places.

Genetic. Familial. Environmental. Experiential. All extending from a time prior to my birth and continuing well past my death. There's no way any of us are masters of our own life. 

We're minute cogs in a much larger machinery that's far beyond our comprehension.

I'm re-sharing my post about my sister's memorial service

Back in 2010 I wrote a blog post soon after my sister died, "Memorial service shows sad side of religion." 

I'm re-sharing that link for the reason I expressed on Facebook just now.

Carol Ann, my sister, died in December 2009. For ten years before her death, starting in 2000, her only daughter (Cathy) refused to let Carol Ann or her husband, Bob, have any contact with their two grandchildren. This hurt Carol Ann and Bob immensely. It was a source of great pain for them.

 

A primary reason for this sad estrangement was the fundamentalist religion embraced by Cathy and her husband. Carol Ann and Bob didn't believe in God. But they sure believed in loving their daughter and grandchildren. Yet Cathy felt they were a bad influence on their grandchildren.

 

Yesterday I heard from Cathy for the first time in many years. She wanted to reconnect with me, her uncle. Before I respond to her email, I wanted to re-read the blog post I wrote about my sister's memorial service, where I talked about the importance of reconciling with loved ones while they're alive.

 

Because after they're dead, it's too late. I liked what I said about this back in 2010, and I still like the post now. I'm sharing it in the hope that if anyone who comes across this Facebook post is in a similar situation, maybe reading what I wrote will spur them to reach out to a family member, or anyone else, they're estranged from.

 

Now. Not later. We can't count on later ever happening, no matter how long we believe we and the person we're distanced from will live. Carol Ann was just 72 when she died. Bob died soon after. Without having seen their grandchildren for over ten years.

Regret is a form of mental time travel

Regret is one of the more interesting emotions. Assuming that is what it is, an emotion. 

I find that regret isn't like happiness, sadness, anger, love, or any of the other emotions with an obvious feeling component. 

Regret is more subtle.

It's like a raw ingredient for other emotions such as sadness or anxiety. Cooked in a certain way, regret can turn into an unpleasant emotional stew, though by itself regret often is rather cerebral.

The foundation of regret is feeling that I should have done something differently, even though at the time I did that thing, it seemed like the right thing to do.

That's a complex sentence. 

I'm pretty sure only humans feel regret. Other animals probably lack the ability to mentally time travel that regret requires. 

If I simply did something that turned out badly, I'd just be disappointed. 

Like when I played competitive club tennis. I'd know that I lost the match because of too many double-faults when I was serving. OK, you can't win them all. No big deal.

But adding in the time travel of regret changes my disappointment into something more disturbing 

Brian, you fool, if you hadn't double-faulted at game point when it was 5-5 in the second set, you would have won the match.

Now I've both gone back in time to remember that screw-up, and also gone forward in time to an alternative reality where my double faults didn't exist, and maybe even turn into aces.

My regret is that I'm stuck with what actually happened, instead of the imagined better happening if I hadn't done what I did -- double-fault too much.

Of course, there's no guarantee that I would have won the match even with zero double faults. 

My opponent might have won regardless. So it's difficult to see the positive side of regret. I can learn from my mistakes without feeling that if I hadn't made them, everything would have turned out fine. 

I don't know that. 

And even if somehow I could know that, I didn't know at the time I was making a mistake. If I had, I wouldn't have done what I did, because who likes mistakes?

So regret rears its ugly head when I envision myself in the present doing what I didn't actually do in the past, even though back then I had no idea I should have been doing something differently.

Laying out the logic (or illogic) of regret in this way makes it seem like a crazy way for my mind to act. 

Which is why I'm writing a blog post about regret. I know that I don't like the sensation of regret, but it's been difficult for me to figure out how to stop feeling regretful. 

Regret is kind of like pressing on a sore spot. I realize that this isn't a wise thing to do, but the painful sensation has a certain pleasure to it. 

What I just said doesn't make a lot of sense, even to me, though it seems true.

Rather than trying to explain how something painful can be pleasurable, I'll head off in a different direction for my final paragraphs.

I was baptized as a Catholic.

For a few years in elementary school my mother had me go to a lunchtime catechism with black clad nuns while my Protestant schoolmates got to frolic in the playground.

I made it as far as first communion before flaming out on confirmation. Going to confession was, I believe, a requirement for the first communion. 

Being in first or second grade, I didn't have much to confess. I recall the priest asking, "Have you been going to mass every Sunday?" No, I told him. Ah... a sin! 

"Say three Our Father's and two Hail Mary's," I was told, the exact number being lost to my memory. 

I did just that, in what, in retrospect, was a form of regret. I wasn't able to take myself to Sunday Mass, so there was no way I could have done anything different than what my mother had me do.

Yet I still had to confess to a failing even though prior to confession I had no idea that I'd done something wrong. 

I can't say that repeating the prayers was pleasurable. However, I can see how confession could become a way of coping with regret. 

The confessor tells the priest something that, in retrospect, wasn't a good thing to do.

Ordinarily regret would ensue, but since the priest forgives the sin in exchange for, in my case, a few prayers, the pain of regret is lessened or eliminated by the pleasure of scratching the sore of sin through confession.

Maybe writing this blog post is something vaguely similar --  a way to come to grips with the nature of regret by delving into it more deeply than I've ever done before.

Mother's Day blog post points to fuzzy nature of "self"

Hey, I didn't set out to write a philosophical Mother's Day blog post, but what emerged has enough philosophy in it to justify sharing here.

In "My mother lives on in the back of my books" I talk about how we don't really need to think or feel our way toward being close to our deceased parents, for they live on as us in large part. 

This is possible because the boundaries of our "self" are decidedly fuzzy.

There isn't a firm boundary between us and everyone else, since who we are depends on our genetic heritage and experiences, both of which involve contributions from many other people.

Ending the spiritual search

It's a bit difficult for me to tell when my spiritual searching began.

Was it when I tried to figure out in high school the deeper meaning of Bob Dylan's enigmatic song lyrics? Was it when I devoured Sartre, Camus, and other existentialists during my early college years? 

Maybe.

But for sure it started when, in 1969, my wife-to-be and I began learning hatha yoga and meditation from a crazed Greek guy who melded Christianity and Eastern philosophy in a decidedly weird fashion. 

Ever since, I've pursued some sort of spirituality. 

For several decades I spent about two hours a day meditating in accord with a mystical practice that aimed at uniting my soul with God.

Eventually I came to doubt whether soul and God even existed, which understandably deflated my interest in trying to join them together.

In my early 40s martial arts became a sort of spiritual search.

After earning a black belt in a karate style that was pleasingly eclectic, I switched to Tai Chi in 2004, which I've practiced ever since.

Taoism and Buddhism became my favorite spiritual philosophies. I made mindfulness my meditation.  

Now, at the age of 72, I've started to ponder the pros and cons of ending my spiritual searching -- with a emphasis on the pros. 

Always looking for more from life than what life already is giving me is beginning to seem unwise. 

More meaning. More happiness. More purpose. More depth. All that more, more, more seems to lead to a hamster-wheel sort of existence.

Spiritual seeking can become such a habit, the seeker doesn't realize that they're going around and around without really getting anywhere.

If we're in an endless loop of seek-find-seek-find, the way out is to either stop seeking or find that which satisfies completely. 

Since I'm not completely satisfied with life (who is?), it seems to me that giving up a quest to make life into something that it isn't already is the best way to go.

Understand: in no way do I see this as embracing fatalism or not trying to make my life better.

But I want to do this in a natural fashion. I want to just be an average person living life as it is, not as some imagined Spiritual Life with capital letters. 

Three weeks ago an inguinal (groin) hernia came into my life, an unexpected guest. 

About a quarter of men will get a hernia at some point. So what I'm dealing with is common. Last week I had a consultation with a surgeon, which went well. 

My old spiritual self would have tried to find some deeper meaning in the hernia. Working off karma? A way to test my equanimity? The universe sending me a message of some sort?

My new not-so-spiritual self just wants to handle the hernia as smoothly as I can and to get it surgically repaired ASAP.

In other words, I'm viewing myself realistically. I'm just a guy who, like lots of other guys, has a hernia that he wants fixed. End of story.

This is, of course, the way lots of people look upon problems in their life. 

Not as an opportunity to evolve into a more refined spiritual being. Just as a damn problem that needs attention. 

I can't say that I've totally given up my addiction to spiritual seeking. I just see the light at the end of the seeking tunnel. 

Or maybe more accurately, the lack of extra light. 

Life already has plenty of light. That's how I'm able to write this blog post. An LED bulb is shining on my desk. My laptop's screen is aglow. 

Where's the need to be spiritually enlightened when the world already has so much light?

Behold... my uncluttered office. Miracles do happen!

I wish I'd taken a "before" photo of my office before I was forced to move everything out so it could be painted after wallpaper was removed.

Just believe me when I say that while some people might consider that I have too much stuff in it now, the post-painting makeover is an astounding de-clutterization.

Which makes my wife happy.

You can marvel at the New Look via a post on my HinesSight blog, "My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me."

It's our 31st anniversary today. Here's some wedding photos.

Easy to remember our anniversary when it is St. Patrick's Day.

I shared some photos of our 1990 wedding and my ghastly-botched attempt at a marriage proposal in a HinesSight blog post, "Been married for 31 years today. But I'm not great at proposing."

From the photos you'll see how much marriage has aged me. Or...wait, maybe it is aging that has aged me. 

I get a flash of churchless insight: "Stop. Just stop."

For many years, at least seventeen, but really even longer, I've been steadily discarding bits and pieces of the religious beliefs (Eastern variety) that held sway in my mind for thirty-five years.

I've done away with overt religiosity, but subtle remnants remain. 

For example, at times during the day for a short period I like to repeat a Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu. 

And while mindfulness doesn't strike me as being at all religious, sometimes I go beyond simply paying close attention to what I'm doing and imagine that mindfulness can lead to benefits such as fewer problems in my life.

That might be the case. However, that sort of imagining can edge mindfulness into prayer territory, a hope for what might be rather than focusing on what is in the present moment.

Last night I had an interesting experience.

It was one of those times where I feel like something that's been churning away in my unconscious suddenly bursts through into conscious awareness -- unexpectedly, strongly, clearly.

The experience only lasted a second or two.

What flashed brightly in my mind was a message that wasn't expressed in words, but via an intuition. Stop. Just stop. 

Instantly, without thought, I knew what the "stop" meant.

Stop finding problems in your life when they don't actually exist.
Stop trying to improve yourself, since you don't have a self.
Stop trying to control what can't be controlled.
Stop adding an unnecessary "spiritual" dimension to reality.

The flip side of that "stop" was equally vivid. 

Relax.
Let go.
Worry less.
Enjoy more.
Embrace not knowing.

Today I still had a feeling along the lines I've just described. I had a lot of chores to do. I did them. All of them. I didn't make more out of them than was necessary.

Here and now physical reality seemed just fine to me. 

Yes, things weren't perfect. I didn't need them to be. I didn't even need them to be any different than what they were.

That included my mind, my awareness, my focus, my emotions, my thoughts. 

I felt like a psychological weight had been released from my psyche, a burden consisting of should's left over from the many years when my mind was filled with religious rules, vows, commandments, aspirations, and such.

Of course, this isn't the first time I've had that sort of "Stop. Just stop." message appear in my mind. Here's some blog posts along that line.

Believing in problems may be our only problem
What is the problem religions are trying to solve?
My meditation evolves to an exalted state of doing nothing

I talk chakras and meridians with a churchless visitor

Following on the heels of a previous email exchange of views that I fashioned into a blog post, here's another one.

This time I was asked about a relative of a Church of the Churchless reader who surprised this person by embracing a yogic view of chakras that was "woo-woo." 

Here's the message that I got, followed by my response.

Dear Brian,

 

You might remember, a while back, you were kind enough to send me that lovely killer list of books that I'd requested for a cousin of mine who was working on her thesis.

 

Well, she finished that course of hers, and ended up starting a Yoga retreat of her own, and then ended up losing her fledgling entrepreneurial venture to the Covid thing. 

 

Which is sad, of course, but the other day I happened to meet her, after ages, and when I asked her why she wanted to start such a woo-woo venture in the first place (it doesn't -- didn't -- just teach you physical exercises and stuff, it claimed to clean your chakras and whatnot), we had a falling-out of sorts. 

 

No doubt we'll get over this, we're generally pretty close, and blood is thicker than water, et cetera, but the reason I thought to write about this to you is because this thought, this idea, it occurred to me, that probably there are people who instinctively shun the dodgy woo, and people who lack that instinct. 

 

My cousin, bless her soul, she's a good enough girl otherwise, probably is of the latter bent. I myself wouldn't dream of touching a woo retreat with a barge pole, ever, no matter how lucrative, but apparently this cousin of mine is open to that kind of deal.

 

I mean, it's weird.

 

First, because my cousin isn't the gullible kind that swallows this kind of nonsense.  And two, because she isn't the venal kind, the greedy get-rich-at-all-costs kind who is amoral about how she makes her money: exactly the opposite, in fact, she gave up a lucrative corporate career to shift to more "spiritual" vistas (and in general minus the superstition that sometimes comes with this hankering after the "spiritual").

 

My point is, I find it so weird, someone like my cousin going down this path. The setting up of this woo shop, I mean. 

 

And yet of my kin and my friends, that I discussed this with, not one found her "career decision" odd or unbecoming, not one. On the contrary, it was my criticism that came to be criticized, without exception. 

 

And when I find I'm the only guy who's seemingly thinking straight, in the midst of heaps and heaps of folks who're seemingly deluded, I generally pause and think, hard, whether I haven't somehow hit some blind spot of mine own, if I'm not missing something. And I really don't know whom else to ask!  Hence this email.

 

I'd welcome your views on this, well, on what is after all a non-issue, in the sense that this is nothing to do with me really,but which troubles me, nevertheless, on general principles.

 

With my good wishes, ________

 

This was my response.

 

_______, good to hear from you again. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to say anything wise, or even cogent, about your cousin’s embrace of woo-woo. Meaning, so-called “spiritual” stuff with no grounding in fact or reason.

 

Well, let’s make that a certain kind of reason — one that is founded on science, demonstrable chains of causes and effects, open to debate and questioning.

 

Chakra theory is reasonable within its own yoga context.

 

In my college days I got quite intense about yoga for a while, even teaching it under the auspices of the Greek-Christian yoga instructor who managed to cram together aspects of Christianity and Eastern religions into an approach that appealed to me at first, but later struck me as too damn weird.

 

Anyway, back then I accepted the notion of chakras, kundalini, all that stuff. Of course, I also accepted a lot of other stuff that now strikes me as, to not coin a term, overly woo-woo.

 

Bringing things more toward the present, for seventeen years I’ve been practicing Tai Chi with a nice group of people. I enjoy Tai Chi for a number of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the Chinese concepts of meridians and subtle energy channels that my instructor embraces, along with some members of my Tai Chi class.

 

I’ve learned to keep a faint smile on my face when the instructor, or anyone else, talks about how they feel the energy of Chi/Ki coursing through their body. I believe in energy, and I feel the energy of my body. I just don’t look upon that energy in the same fashion that they do.

 

Yet this has no bearing on my Tai Chi practice, in the same way that not believing in chakras would have no, or very little, bearing on the benefits someone gets from yoga practice. In these cases the extra topping of woo-woo doesn’t really change the character of the main dish of Tai Chi or Yoga.

 

So I can understand why most of your relatives and friends look upon your criticism of your cousin as being largely unjustified. After all, almost everybody believes in some weird stuff, whether supernatural (God/miracles) or natural (Big Foot/space aliens). 

 

I mean, woo-woo is a continuum, not a dichotomy.

 

I’m pretty sure that if the most scientific, reasoned, fact-based person in the entire world were pressed to disclose everything they believed in, deep down, and probably hidden from the outside world, would be some beliefs about objective reality that can’t be defended.

 

Many top-notch scientists, like Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, are deeply religious. By and large they don’t try to justify their religious belief by recourse to rational arguments. It is a matter of faith that offers meaning to them.

 

The way I see it, and the way I’ve argued it on this blog for seventeen years, is that someone’s religiosity or embrace of the supernatural is no one else’s business unless that someone attempts to force their beliefs onto others, or presents those beliefs on an open forum (like this blog, via comments) that invite a skeptical response.

 

If your cousin enjoys believing that chakras are true, fine. That isn’t your cup of tea, as the saying goes, but she enjoys sipping from it. 

 

Again, we’re talking about a continuum here. In the grand scheme of religious beliefs, ranging from least dangerous to most dangerous, I view a belief in chakras or meridians/energy channels as being way down on the “barely bad” side of things.

 

I doubt that anyone has ever gone to war over chakras, burned someone at the stake over chakras, or hurled threats of divine retribution if someone doesn’t believe in chakras. 

 

One thing that I find helpful is to physicalize woo-woo notions. Here’s what I mean by that. Chakras refer to different parts of the body. Those parts definitely exist. For example, we have a head. We have an abdomen. We have genitals. 

 

Our attention can be focused on different parts of our body. When I’m thinking intensely, I feel like I’m in my head. When I’m hungry, I feel like I’m in my abdomen. When I crave sex, I feel like I’m in my genitals. 

 

This isn’t what chakra theory is about, but it is some of what it’s about. Thus there is a bridge from a purely physical view of “chakras” to a yogic spiritual view of them. 

 

In a similar sense, I feel energy within my body when I’m doing Tai Chi.

 

I don’t know if that is the same feeling other people refer to when they speak of Chi/Ki. I look upon the energy as physical. They look upon it as spiritual or supernatural. Again, though, there’s a bridge between these ways of looking at energy meridians, because we’re speaking of a continuum, not a dichotomy. 

 

And it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that acupuncture, say, one day will be found to have a foundation in solid science. I’m unsure if this will happen, but I’m open to it. 

 

Thus you might find it interesting to speak with your cousin in more depth about her embrace of yoga, including what she finds appealing about chakra theory. There might be common ground between you and her in this regard. Or, maybe not. Regardless, it’s worth exploring. 

 

      — Brian

Blog post about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton

If Church of the Churchless visitors want to see a photo of me as a kid, looking questionably cute, I just wrote a post for my HinesSight blog that included one.

See "The Hiltons" is a book about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton.

We don't know what we don't know until it's too late

My mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Of course, the big difference between my mind and God is that I, along with my mind, actually can be shown to exist.

At any rate, this morning I found myself thinking along this line. If you consider that this shows I'm questionably sane, I'd be the first to agree with you.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. So have you, I'm confident. But from here on I'm going to use "I" to refer to myself as an example that applies to almost everybody.

The problem is, those mistakes have only been evident after the fact. Meaning, after I'd already done what, a bit or a lot later, I regretted doing. 

So at the time I did what turned out to be a mistake, my mind was feeling that I was doing the right thing.

This is obvious, because if I'd had a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing, I would have stopped and tried to figure out what needed to be done right.

Now, this shows that it is really difficult for me to not do the wrong thing, since there's no warning light in my mind that flashes when I'm heading off the right track.

My Subaru Crosstrek, on the other hand, makes a chirp when I cross the center line of the road. In that sense, my car is smarter than I am.

On the positive side -- assuming there's something positive in doing wrong -- it's hard for me to blame myself when I didn't know that I was screwing up at the time, only later.

Hard, yet not impossible, because I often do berate myself for not recognizing what I should have done differently.

I then pondered the question of what to do about this vicious circle of not knowing that I don't know what I should be doing until it is too late to do anything differently.

At first I thought it would be possible to carefully consider alternative ways of doing something before I did it, to have a better chance of doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing.

But there's several problems with this.

One is that it would take too much time, even if I only did this for new or unusual things that needed doing. Washing dishes, for example, is so habitual and familiar, I rarely mess it up. 

By contrast, last Saturday I changed the oil in our generator after it had been running for most of the day during a full week after an an ice storm caused massive power outages in Oregon. 

I got the warm oil draining into a quart yogurt container and figured I had time to change the air cleaner on the other side of the generator. When I went back to the oil change side, the container had started to overflow with oil.

I immediately thought, "That was stupid of me." Yet at the time I had no thought that taking my eye off of the draining oil was going to cause a problem. 

So is it possible to eliminate our screw-ups when we have no idea that we're doing something wrong? No. Screwing up comes with being human. I do feel, though, that focusing on doing one thing at a time reduces the chance of a screw-up.

If I'd patiently watched the oil drain into the yogurt container instead of changing the air cleaner simultaneously, I would have been able to prevent the minor oil spill onto our carport cement.

However, no matter how carefully we try to do things, frequently we'll find that we've done something wrong. In that case, compassion appears to be in order.

After all, few of us consciously set out to mess something up. Almost everybody tries to do the right thing, even if it seems clear to almost everybody else that we did the wrong thing. Thus self-compassion is as important as compassion for others. 

Often we just don't know. And we don't know that we don't know. Neither do the other people who don't know that they don't know.

If the person in the car ahead of me knew that their left-turn blinker has been on for several blocks, I'm confident they would have turned it off. So they're not trying to irritate me by pretending they're turning left, yet never do.

They, like me frequently, are just caught in the grip of not knowing that they don't know.

This, of course, gets us into the much larger question of free will. Along with many, if not most, neuroscientists, after a lot of reading about how modern science looks upon free will, I don't believe it exists.

Which doesn't stop me from getting upset when generator oil being changed overflows a yogurt container. I do, though have a more philosophical attitude when I do something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done.