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In the end, “being childlike” curbs aging
I finally did something I thought I would never do; look at the end of a book to see the conclusion.
It was an accident! I swear. (Well, mostly an accident!) I was looking at the index, wondering if there was an “addendum” for statistics or graphs, when a bold sub-head grabbed my attention:
“Being Childlike“
It pulled me toward the brief article. I wanted to know how that trait, described in the book: “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind,” by Deepak Chopra, M.D. , helped with the aging process. The writing described one of seven practices one can use to “stay young” while the chronological age increases. (Notice, I did not say biological age. A 50-year-old can have the biological features of 35-year-old if he or she exercises, eats well, and is optimistic. Conversely, according to Chopra, one born on the same day as our 50-year-old, could look and act 65, should they worry excessively, eat pizzas every day (my words) and get no more exercise than a couch potato.)
But “being childlike” also resonated with my growing belief:” You must connect with the child in you, to find Love, Compassion and Forgiveness.” That “child” still exists and comes to the surface when we allow them to ”hop, skip and jump” now and then, particularly while trekking along our path to (and in) total awareness.
Not that I am overly concerned about Dr. Chopra’s secondary headlined topic, “The Quantum Alternative To Growing Old.” But I agree with his approach and am glad to see it quantified scientifically for any “professional” nay-sayers out there. I believe something is given a lot more credence when it is legitimasized by documented studies.
So, without further ado, let me share with you the seven traits, brought to you by Deepak Chopra, M.D, called a “Creative Action Plan” –
Experiencing Silence
Spending Time in Nature
Experiencing and Trusting Emotions
Remaining Centered Amid Chaos
Being Childlike
Being Self-Referral
Practicing Non-Attachment
( For More, See “Childlike” Two)
Quantum Physics offered for Christ’s Sake
Quantum Physics is something I can hardly spell, let alone think I would want to learn more about.
But the little exposure I have received so far makes me believe its part of a “New Age” revival. And may have possibly been prophesied about more than two millenniums ago.
Next time that you are in a book store, ask to see the “Gospel according to Mary Magdalene.” (see mary) Damn if she ain’t referring to Quantum Physics. And no wonder Peter gets pissed. “Why would Jesus reveal this to you, and not to us?” Peter asks, with me paraphrasing his words. He also noted — correctly in that day and age of male chauvinism and domination — that none of the Jews in Jerusalem would accept this kind of presentation from a mere woman. (His indication, not mine!)
Peter asks the rest of the apostles: Would Jesus prefer her (Mary) over us?
Read it!
The passage is very small. Most of the book is commentaries, along with an author’s view of what the writings purport to say. You don’t have to be a Christian or even believe in any or all the Bible, whether according to King James or the Vatican, to appreciate the text .
But see if Jesus is not talking about some “New Age” stuff right out of our 20th century (21st century?) physics teachings. Perhaps Mary was given this info 2,000 years ago and someone in the early Church could not comprehend it, and therefore, banned it, as “heresy.”
Nah, that would be too far-fetched to believe of the beginnings of Christianity.
Wouldn’t it?
Nov. 22, a day like no other (USA) day
My 10th grade American history teacher whispers the horrible news: “somebody shot the president.”
Panic starts, spreading quickly through the class room. Everyone is talking, particularly those who only hear part of the news.
Someone asks her, my favorite teacher, to repeat what was overheard. “The President has just been shot,” She says. Her face now becoming ashen white.
Oh my god, one student, an African-American girl says as she holds her hands to her face. Never saw so much anguish as I did on that girl’s pretty young face. She starts to cry. Others talk. They talk over each other. The noise gets louder. You can’t hear your self think, everyone is talking what sounds like “gibberish“ and for the first time in my young life I think I understand what the word, “chaos,” actually means. No escape from complete and utter disorder.
Next, our confident and normally strong teacher is restoring a little calm, raising her voice to get our attention, telling us to gather our school things, to leave the classroom and to go to the auditorium.
All classes at Dobbins Technical Institute, a trade school here in Philadelphia, PA, are merging together in assembly. No one knows why. Must be a speaker or an important video for us to see, I think. Couldn’t have anything to do with something so far removed from us as, what might be happening outside of school, my home town, my own little world. Could it?
The wooden seats are hard, uncomfortable to sit in, particularly as everyone is squirming around, talking in our low voices. Know one seems to know why we are gathering together, this November 22nd, in the Year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and sixty-three.
And then it happens. I am sitting closer to my history teacher than any other student. We are seperated from the rest. Alone. Another teacher, a former football player who now teaches trigonometry, has just said something to her that I could not make out. My teacher turns to me. I can still see her long, dark hair and the dark glasses that she would peer over when trying to challenge us with a question or two. I admit now that I had a crush on her, but never told anyone. That’s one reason I went to graduate school and obtained a masters’ degree in American History. She helped me believe in history, and more importantly, in my Self.
What she said as she turned her eyes to me, her glasses now removed from her face, as she focused all of her adult vision toward me, a kid, ten days shy of his 14th birthday, I will remember ’til the day I die.
“The president is dead,” she says, as her voice cracks slightly, a far cry from the usual professional tone she offers in our classes.
John F. Kennedy, the youngest person ever to be elected president of the United States of America, is killed on this day in November of 1963.
It means more to me now than Thanksgiving Day will ever mean during the month of November. More than Veterans Day. More than all Saints’ Day. More than . . . ah, to hell with Black Friday!
I remember this day as another American generation will recall “9 – 11;” recall what they (“we”) were doing and where we were when the airplanes crashed into the twin towers.
Why does tragedy always stand out so much?
Perhaps, to remind us a moment “in time” can last a “life time.”
And that we can recall it decades later with a little more love, compassion and understanding.
“But, I didn’t ‘intend’ for that to happen!”
Indecisive.
The very word itself creeps me out.
Can’t think of anything more debilitating than this four-syllable word. It ranks up there with “impotent.” At least to someone who’s always seen himself a “man of action.” Military might have had something to do with me. Take action, is what I learned, so that no one can see how unsure you really are at times. Whatever you do, don’t freeze. Even a bad decision is better than none; appearing immobile is just like showing you’re “afraid.”
Oh boy, there goes another one of those words I hate to mention in public, “afraid.” How often have I been afraid to do something in life? Afraid to start something new, afraid to follow a different path. Afraid to Love?
Afraid that no one would care what I had to say or give a hoot if they even listened to me in the first place.
How, you may ask, did I get to this point? I can trace it directly to an article on “discernment,” provided by my internet friend, Steven Goodheart. Your actions set in motion your “intent,” is what I got out of this reading, and you before you act, you should know what “intent” you intend . . .
You understand that? Well, neither do I, and that is the crux of the matter. I don’t know what my “intent” is or what it should be in the first place.
I guess the bigger question is “what is one’s intention for life?”
Beats the hell out of me. And there’s the rub, as Shakespeare once said with his full intent aimed directly at me. I guess I’m looking for intent today. How can I choose to take a step, if I can not see where my next movement will take me, or what chain reaction it could possibly start?
So I’m stuck. Almost afraid to share this, believing that such an admission would only show weakness and make me too vulnerable to what, I don’t know. See. I can’t even name the object of my fears! It’s almost as if I am waiting for something, someone to guide me, to point me into a direction to go, and give me a gentle little nudge.
And then I ask myself, “what would Woody Allen do in a situation like this? Because, that is exactly how I feel. Insecure and anxious. WoodyAllen-like. We share the same birth day, have the same biorhythms. Why not the same neurosis? (Or is that neuroses?)
Let me think about this. But not too long. I don’t “intend” to wait and hang around here all day!
Unconditional Love = Warmth, Peace, Joy
Love seeps through these words by Meng Foong, and I want to share this exchange. It refers to the Post about-detachment.
contoveros says:
The hardest feeling I have difficulty with unattaching myself from is Love.
I find that Love helps me to seperate myself from all else, and it offers me such a warmth when I “let go” of all else. I absorb a piece of the Divine when I touch my Love, and I would really have bitter/sweet loss if I had to depart and say goodbye to my “Beloved.”
Tell me I won’t have to sever this tie to my life line.
michael J
Reply
Posted by meng foong
Thanks for sharing.
Love is the one thing that we all are learning in this life existence. Love is the basis of everything. Love (true love) is the only meaning for us to be here.
True love such as selfless love or unconditioned love or compassionate love without attachment will bring warmth, peace and joy to ourselves and other beings. Selfish love or conditioned love or lustful love which attached to names and forms, and likes and dislikes will bring unhappiness to ourselves and to the people who we love or who we want them to love us.
When the love is pure, there is no unhappiness. True love doesn’t end or die when our relationship ends or our body meet death. We are love itself when we know what is true love and we don’t need to ask for love or crave for being loved by someone else, when we know that we are not separate from all (love is not limited only in relationships) and we can share this love unconditioned without lust and selfishness. There is no need to detach from this true love, because there is no attachment at all in this true love. Just pure love and kindness, without selfishness, anger, hatred, lust, jealousy, greed, likes and dislikes, fears and worries.
It is like this love is part of us, it is not separated from us, it is not something that we gained or accumulated from outside. It is unlimited and inexhaustible from within. Just like our hands and feet, they are part of our body and are not separated from the body. We don’t need to detach our hands and feet from the body to be free from doing bad actions or going to bad places. It is our pure intentions and pure thoughts that will lead us to have self-control over our body and our actions, and not doing anything that will harm ourselves or other beings. We don’t need to stop doing good when we say “detach from the fruit of doing something good”. But it is the inner detachment that we are not looking for any good in return when we do something good which gives us the true freedom and unlimited love to share love with many others without getting tired or frustrated when everything “goes wrong” or things are not the way that we like it to be…
Love and peace to all when we love selflessly. But it will be “love” and hate to all when we love selfishly.
Thanks for sharing your love with all.
Om shanti,
Meng Foong
The Choice is Yours; Inner Peace Awaits
Hate to choose things.
So much pressure is self-imposed, you can’t get away from making choices sometimes. Yet, I want to decide which of the following have more bearing on my Soul.
Want to choose for me?
All right, I’ll pick two of the following. *See if your guesses (your favorites) match mine and how I rank them.
Symptoms of Inner Peace
(by Saskia Davis author unknown)
-
A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experience
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An unmistakable ability to enjoy the moment
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A loss of interest in judging other people
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A loss of interest in judging self
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A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others
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An inability to worry (this is a very serious symptom!)
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Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation
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Frequent acts of smiling
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An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than to make them happen
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An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.
(Printed from “A Personal Peace Process: EFT and TAT, Sarah O’Doherty, M.Ed — “Wellness Energy Tools”)
(* — 1, Smile more ; 2, Enjoy the moment; 3, Let things happen; 4, Don’t judge others; 5, Don’t judge Self; 6, Don’t interpret actions of others; 7, Act spontaneously; 8, Appreciate more frequently; 9, Extend Love; 10, Stop the worry.)
[Ok. I lied. I chose all, and ranked them. So sue me already]
(Note; A few hours after this “went to press” I got a “news bulletin” identifying the author — Saskia Davis. The original poem is here: http://www.symptomsofinnerpeace.net)
Finally, Light Shines on My Mutiny Quash
I lied to my platoon to prevent a mutiny from bursting to a head some 40 years ago.
Today, I granted myself forgiveness. I cleansed a wound that never seemed to heal until now.
I served as a First Lieutenant In Vietnam and was releived of my command of an infantry platoon just two hours before getting orders to appear at a helicopter base port. Taken by surprise, I met the battalion commander who asked me to help avoid a military ”disaster” from developing any further. My platoon of some 25 soldiers, grunts, as we liked being called, had refused to board the ships that would fly them into the “field” to patrol and engage the enemy. Most of the men sat on the heliport, reclining on their backpacks, disobeying all orders to climb aboard.
A day earlier, several members of the second squad were medivaced to a hospital after being ambushed by the Viet Cong. I had assigned a sergeant with some 10 years experience to lead the squad. Unfortunately, he was “new in-country” and may not have had time to become acclimatized to the situation. In other words, he didn’t know what he was suppose to do in a war zone yet.
Our superior officer blamed me, the man in charge, and for the second time in my young military career, I found myself removed of my command. I was devastated the first time, and view that period as the lowest moment of my life. I felt lower than dirt and less useful than the ground below. At least dirt could be used to grow things and offer a structure to build on, I believed then.
This time, however, my being sacked hurt far less. I knew I had done everything to insure the well being of my platoon, and instill in each member an esprit de corps that carried over into their individual lives. They learned to live for each other, to work as a unit, to place the needs of the platoon over their own.
It came as no shock when I heard they refused to go to the field! It was a mutiny, pure and simple. They protested what they believed was an outrageous act committed against them: the removal of their leader, Lieutenant Michael J Contos, yours truly. (See Part 2 My Mutiny Quash
Healing Technique Sparks Family Fall Out
“Unclean spirits!” The words hit me like a ton of bricks. Across my face.
Besides being rejected, I felt lightning had just stuck the ground beneath me. I detected fear and the raising of a drawbridge that would block out all light, no matter where the Source originated.
It is now back to “devil idolatry.” With the words above, my spouse slammed shut any chance I had of sharing with her a new approach to peace that had just been introduced to me at a class. It’s called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). I first saw it on a “Wellness” site on the internet. Got drawn to a discussion of connecting it with inner peace and harmony. Then this woman started to move her hands across her face and head, parts of her chest and seemed to be “tapping” the sides of her body below each armpit in a “monkey” style.
I thought she was having some sort of fit right in front of me!
But she was simply demonstrating this technique first championed by a fellow named Gary Craig, according to my class instructor, Sarah O’Doherty. He introduced it to the “West” in 1995. Born in 1940, Craig, a Stanford engineering graduate, uploaded the practice to the ‘Net and has made it available for free. EFT Sixth Edition “I’ve been doing energy healing work since 1991 and my jaw still drops at the results,” he said in a pamphlet provided by the Resiliency Center, Ambler, PA. “I’ve lost count of the number of phobias, panic/anxiety attacks, traumatic memories, guilt, grief and physical ailments that have been elegantly relieved (within minutes) by this procedure. Even though EFT violates just about every conventional belief out there, the results remain remarkable,” he said, while adding it was not 100 percent perfect, “. . . it usually works well and the results are sometimes spectacular. It often works where nothing else will.”
I felt immediate relief of a mild headache that was developing while attending my first class yesterday. Our teacher told the six students to focus on a “problem” each had, and to label it according to a scale from 1 to 10, with ten being the highest degree of irritation and one, the lowest. I wrote “3″ and had to admit it dropped to a “1″ by the end of the 10 minute practice. See EFT Work Out, Part 2.
Thanks for a Path that Preserved my Life
Ever wonder what life would have been like if you made different choices years earlier?
I was 19 when I felt “separated” from most of the people I hung out with and called friends. I wanted to be so much like them; not to care about such things as “love,” “compassion,” other people’s “feelings.” That was “sissy” stuff; Stuff that only a “wuss” would think about. I saw these aspects of myself as a “weakness,”
Looking back, I now see they gave me a strength, a real “life-preserver,” and in some cases, a bullet-proof vest. You see, the neighborhood in which I grew up — Brewerytown (small section of North Philly) — was tough. Some friends never made it beyond the age of 30. Others who feared the living of day-to-day, took their own lives before reaching 40. And of course, drugs — which most of us experimented with — sucked the marrow right out of some of the best of us, leaving nothing but the legacy of a lost life behind.
Bobby Mendel was one of first killed while in his early 20s. A year younger than me, he was a “late bloomer,” not dating until well toward the end of high school, and possibly marrying the first girl he ever “knew” He was shot by next-door neighbor while defending her honor during an argument outside their Philadelphia row home. The shooter went to jail. I lost track of his whereabouts.
“Big Dave,” a fellow from the bordering neighborhood, Fairmount, was not as lucky. Someone killed him in what we later have named a “drive-by” shooting . Never did hear of any arrests. Another young man (maybe 19), whom I only knew as “Rebel,” died from a broken neck when he dove into shallow water while trespassing at a rock quarry with others. Could not see the bottom, eyewitnesses said, because the water was so dirty.
Two guys who sang first tenor in singing groups in which I had harmonized ended up taking their own lives. Mikey Dugan, a fellow who helped get me my first job as a messenger boy at 15, might have overdosed following what friends say was a deep depression. He came from a rough family. Brother, Dusty Dugan, did “state’ time for some assault or another.”Moose” Moran, who also sang with a clear falsetto voice, was rumored to have passed away by hanging himself from the 29th Street Bridge that separated Brewerytown and Fairmount.
Others died way too early. Tommy Humphreys, who fathered a child with one of the 15-year-old girls who ”hung “out with us, succumbed to sclerosis of the liver. Some say drugs may have contributed to his early demise. I still think of Connie Magee birthing their child and having to enter adulthood earlier than the rest of us.
One of the saddest deaths I had to accept involved Pat Lawn, clearly the most beautiful girl who hung at 29th and Poplar Streets. She was the ideal teenager: pretty, soft-spoken, always appearing as a real lady. She also could dance and sing! She would often harmonize with us guys, filling in with the high parts. You knew she came from a good family and that if any one would make it out of the neighborhood in one piece, it was going to be her. She was loved by many of the guys from my “crowd.” Johnny Keller, whose kidney failed him before turning 21 and who lived beyond the 20 years doctors gave him to last following a transplant from his brother, Edward, was smitten by her. He carried that with him ’til the day he died. My best friend. Never marrying. Dying before I had a chance to tell him how much he meant to me. To all of us.
Jimmy “Soss” loved Pat, too. He ended up marrying her. But split as problems developed. Some may have involved drugs. Lots of drugs that Pat got drawn to years after breaking up with Jim.
Pat Lawn died from an overdose, taking a little part of all of us who knew her.
Well, I have a lot to be thankful for this November, 2009. Hope I can carry that feeling over to the holidays, Thanksgiving and all. I could have chosen a different path than the one I walk today. I am thankful for lasting this far on the Journey.
Meditation opens a new path way home
Driving should always be this much fun!
I’m talking about my ride home from an “introduction to meditation” class I took at Montgomery County Community College the other night. Our instructors talked us into a place where I asked two simple questions: “Who Are You?” and “Who Were You?” We took part in an exercise to find our other “Self,” and I met what I have come to describe as a friendly “pathfinder.”
An image of an oil lamp materialized in my mind, as I sunk deeper into this directed meditation. The lamp was the type used in Biblical times or, as my thoughts revealed, the ”magic” lamp that the stars of “A Thousand and One Nights” first appeared, Aladdin and the Genie!
My lamp remained unlit throughout the 10-minute meditation. When the conscious world returned with the opening of my eyes I saw Persia. Persia in the time of that famous book and the Genie and. . . Next I saw a world in which I have only recently discovered, the world with the love poems of the Sufi, a religious sect out of ancient Persia whose adherents wrote volumes of enchanting verses to their “Beloved.”
I first had contact with the Sufi following Part Three of a three-part post I wrote at the beginning of my Blogging here. I spoke about how we can serve God by serving Humanity and got one of those “related posts” for an article describing the Sufi belief in serving God through the serving of all creatures in Creation, particularly, the ones who need it the most, us humans.
I next encountered the Sufi in a book which exposed me to a taste of their poetry and how I had “longed” to be with my “loved one” all of my life, and that it was this “longing” that constituted the real creation of the Love, a “yearning” to be with God, the “Beloved.”
What can Love of God possibly have to do with loving the ride home from Blue Bell to Conshohocken, PA?
“Working meditation” is that type of openness to the moment, the “living in” the moment that mindfulness practice generates. I call it my “love cruise,” when I am driving in that state of awareness. For the first time, I noticed the road spanned hills and valleys, coasted “down” a section of the land and then “up” the next. I had never bothered to notice the lay of the road before; never took the time to “feel” its contours even though I had driven this way dozens, perhaps even, hundreds of times.
I drove my car “mind fully,” and was “alive” in each moment, allowing myself to enjoy the newly seen jaunt from school to home. I wondered what it must have been like before they concreted or paved over this road, this one-time path possibly first walked by the Lenni-Lenape Indians. Later, the Welsh and German farmers in the “hinterlands” of Philadelphia who called the different lays of the land by such old names as “crests,” ridges,” and ”valleys,” anything but the word “road.”
I felt connected with the roadway. I felt in tune, in one with this old time-worn path.
Meditation lets me experience the mundane this way, enriching my every step, my every drive.
Letting Go to “Let God” for under $19.95
Got inspired from a glimpse of another’s soul the other day and it cost me nothing.
Nada. Zippo.
Not a penny.
Yet, it was worth the price of admission to the Blog, or simply the time it took to absorb bits of a message that resonated with my soul, my true being.
We talk a lot about “letting go,” but what are we actually trying to do? Let go of our fears, anxieties, our bullheadedness?
And what, or whom takes control, takes over us as we blank out the “negative agitators,” as one observer recently called the baggage of our past and concerns for the future? We can go on auto-pilot, sailing about our daily business, making the easy decisions as we let another Source guide us along the waterways. We must trust that Force. It contains nothing but Goodness, and is concerned only with our best interests.
Some people call that Source God.
That was the message I got from Dana, which I think you may want to investigate yourself. Here was my reaction:
If God Had His Way by Dana
You :
Dana,
Ever think that God flows through our fingertips? Like when we are typing on a keyboard, and the “me” kinda disappears.
I let the words flow. sometimes, not even looking up from the keyboard, letting my heart dictate the series of expressions that form.
I feel an abundance of love, that is, if the “I” can get out-of-the-way, I believe that a good message, an advertisement for God will appear. No, it won’t cost you $19.95, shipping and handling, not included.
But it might just inspire you to help lift someone else’s spirits, like you have done with the “me.”
Maybe just with a half smile, an uplifting furtive glance.
A few lean paragraphs on a post where a gate opens wide for Goodness Sake.
You got me with your writing. Post us again and again. Some addictions can be better than others!
Thanks,
Michael J,
Service can really be fun! As long as it God-filled.
Dana said :
Yes, Michael! The best writing (and moments in life) are where I disappear and God takes over. Funny how hard that is to remember…
Much love,
Dana
PTSD Raises Its Monster Head From Toilet
Put a straight jacket on me.
Hide me in a padded room.
Get me away from people. All people who I can harm with my PTSD.
I had another one of those days. The ones that end up with me saying I’m sorry over and over for something stupid I did. Something in which I make a mountain out of a mole hill. Why do I believe such events pose life and death to me? Why can’t I react like a normal person, perhaps get a little angry, but not lash out with a cry in my voice and feeling I am facing doom?
_______________
It all started in the morning. Going to the bathroom. (It should never happen this early in the day, but it often it explodes at the crack of dawn.)
My son had deposited another one of his incredibly hard stools in the basin of the WC. A plunger stuck out from the toilet. I should have taken a clue right then. Someone tried to perform an emergency plumbing operation and must have left without success.
Well, I’m the best “plumber” in this house, I thought. They don’t know how to plunge. They give up too soon.
And there I pushed. And pushed. To no avail.
The water rose to the top of the porcelain edge and ever so slowly, pouring out of the bowl of the toilet and over onto the floor below.
“Jesus Christ.” I hollered, waking everyone in the household. “We’re going to have to call a plumber.”
I backed up from the toilet, waiting for the water to recede. It must recede, I prayed. It did, and so I plunged away. And once again the water rose, flowing quicker now and soon it joined the puddle outside, forcing its mass of liquid from the small bathroom floor to the carpeted hallway outside.
I threw towels and bath mats at the floor, trying my best to stem the tide. When I got it under control, I turned to the important business of the day. Getting fully awake to get my son out of the house and off to school before 7 o’clock.
____________________
I stood before the bathroom mirror. Had to lean in, I wore no glasses. They broke weeks ago and I have had to wear contact lenses. Do you know how tough it is to go 14 to 18 hours with contacts covering your pupils? Well, I reached for the lens case, put in the right lens, then tackled the more difficult left side.
The lens disappeared! I looked on my fingers, my hand, my arm. No lens. I moved my eye lid up and down, back and forth, eventually rubbing my left eye as hard as possible to “feel” if the lens somehow got stuck there.
Next, I surrendered to “panic.”
“Nicholas,” I hollered, but not as loud as when I spoke the Lord’s name earlier. “I need your help.” My son was fully dressed when he entered the small room. With the eye of an eagle, he spotted the lens on the floor that I had just mopped with clean fluffy towels.
“Go ahead and brush,” I advised him.
“No, not that brush,” I yelled, almost as loud as I did when calling on Jesus. “That’s mine. Have you been using my toothbrush?” I bellowed.
Not to outdone by my yell, Nicholas hollered that it was his brush and that he had used it for days. But it was the only gray brush on the vanity and I only opened its packaging some three days earlier.
I gave in, told him to keep the brush and grabbed the old one I had replaced, but not thrown out. I was to use that for cleaning grout. I replaced it because I found that brush had been moved from my regular spot and I figured someone else used it to clean their grubby little teeth.
_______________________
The contact lens rebelled. It refused to stay in the eye. It hurt every time I laid it on the surface of the eyeball and after the fifth or sixth time, I wanted to fall down crying in full view of my son. No one should have to endure the toilet challenge plus the lens battle in the same morning within a few measly minutes of each crisis.
“Brush,” I holler, seeing that my son has waited for me to move back from the mirror. “You’re going to be late,” I scream.
“No one can talk to me like that,” he yelled just as loud, then stepped to the door about to slam it when I rush out, pushing him back him, giving him the privacy that he should have been given earlier.
Patiently (?) waiting outside, I heard my wife yell at me, saying not to yell at our son. “You don’t know what I have just gone through,” spilled out of me, as if it that was going to explain my tantrum, and somehow ease the tension that was getting more and more palpable in our household. Not sure who said what next, or who told the other to got to hell, but I stormed into the bathroom as soon as Nicholas finished and I finally got the lens in place.
I also apologized to my son, who was gracious enough to say nothing. My wife, although, did not accept my mea culpa as well “You’re always sorry,” she correctly observed, causing me to react with another choice word or two before leaving the bedroom.
_______________________
Finally downstairs, I see Nicholas off to school, feeling as low as the temperature had dipped the night before. I am sick, I thought. I am no good.
I glanced toward the floor. My cat, Sundance, looked up at me. I felt a slight smile come over me. She’s my “Buddha Buddy,” you see. She sits on my lap when I meditate. And so she did this morning, following me to a seat, then jumping up and snuggling into place for our joint relaxation excursion.
Twenty minutes or more went by. I felt refreshed. Revived. Forgiven. I thought of the straight jacket and the padded walls and how much of a monster PTSD has created inside of me. But there also exists a kind, friendly small child inside, and he calmed down the one lacking impulse control.
When I returned upstairs, the toilet somehow worked properly again. The sun was shining, and I looked forward to a new day.
Larger Print Appears for PTSD Readings
“Opening up” to a stranger is, at best, difficult to do.
Confiding your “war zone” fears with a non-veteran can be worse, unless PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) serves as a bond between a brother and a sister.
That’s how I have come to view my own shortcomings: through the eyes and experiences of trauma “survivors” who faced similar life-altering devastations, but who are now finally able to talk about it for the benefit of all . . .
You’ll see by these comments below that there is no discrimination between man and woman when it comes to PTSD. It is an equal opportunity offender.
Finally! by onesurvivor
I said:
Wow,
How a therapist could hurt someone is beyond my way of thinking.
Don’t people go into that profession to actually “help” other people?
I don’t know; sometimes people with PTSD can learn more from others with the same problems. Not so much that misery likes company, but you’re able find out that your own behavior isn’t so out of whack. The trauma is forcing so many others like us to seek help. Both men and women . . . for a lot of different reasons.
Reading about acts of healing and how to help others can, in itself, help us. But only if we face up to our condition.
I keep trying every day, having some little successes here and there, knowing I’ll probably have this devil called PTSD with me for the duration of my tour here on Planet Earth.
Good luck,
Michael J
* * * * * * * *
new comment on the post ‘Finally!’.
Author: onesurvivor
Comment:
Thanks for responding, Michael.
“Wow” is right! I suspect this therapist is meeting a need of her own. Perhaps it is a need to be important and/or to feel needed and/or to control others.
Who knows? I just know that someone should not be a therapist if they have not dealt with their own stuff sufficiently. Not that therapists have to have it completely together…no one does. But they should have it together enough that they are not seeking to meet their needs through their clients.
Sadly, she is becoming more and more known across the internet. People are not seeing the side of her that I, and others, have seen.
Thankfully, I was never a direct client of hers. I was just a member on her “therapeutic” forum.
I have learned a lot and receive a lot of support from fellow survivors. There is definitely a benefit in that…as you have pointed out.
I, too, wonder about having PTSD for the rest of my life. I have found that it does actually get better…if things like this don’t happen to get it all going again!
(Thought this larger print would help people whose vision is as bad as mine. I hate “fine print.” Glad I don’t have to read it any more!)
(Thought this larger print would help people whose vision is as bad as mine. I hate “fine print.” Glad I don’t have to read it any more!)
Life’s Ultimate Prize Goes to Those Aware
I admit it . . . I cheated.
I rushed to a finish line and cheated myself.
I thought I could complete the course as quickly as possible to move on to the next life event.
But it took me but a moment to realize my mistake.
I had cheated myself of real improvement, real growth and I now know that the true challenge in life lies in the smallest detail.
Unable to get into the pool for my morning swim today, I exercised on Nautilus equipment, killing time until the water aerobics class would end. I punished my legs, arms and torso, pushing amd straining my muscles on various machines. I then came to the exercise equipment to work on the abdomen, that part of my body that resembles a watermelon in a well-watered garden, when I read the instructions for what seemed like the hundredth time, only this time the words sunk in.
Instead of pounding the bar that tightened my stomach muscle and quickly releasing the tension, I realized that I needed to “hold” that tension — that pressure — to gain the most benefit from the exercise. In other words, I had to “slow down” instead of “speed up” as I have done. Not only at the LA Fitness gym in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, PA, the past two years, but my whole life.
I drew a major lesson from this rather mundane exercise. I have rushed through life, always looking toward the end product, the completion date, the finish line. I rarely took time to be aware of my surroundings, my environment, my self as I speeded ahead. Looking back, I see that my life was nothing more than starts and finishes, starting and getting through college, studying to get a masters’ degree, and then that first, the second and then a third job as I rushed to arm myself with a good reputation and a chance for prospering in the future for my social security.
Save money for a future “rainy day,” place weekly deposits in a company-matched 401-K, and then set up an annuity as quickly as possible to ensure an income years down the road.
When had I ever taken time to stop and pause, really be in the moments of my life that truly mattered? Sure, there was a wedding (two for this divorced fellow!), not to mention the birth of my son. Getting out of a war zone called Vietnam makes my all-time list, as well as speaking at a graduation class, and jumping out of an airplane (not recommended for the faint of heart!).
But these are only highlighted moments of a life that I now look at and wonder where it was all leading to . . . what has been the purpose . . . and if I could do it all over again, would I have made the same choices?
I can’t answer any of those questions, except perhaps for the last one. I’m a stubborn Greek, and I don’t think I would have changed anything. (Well, there was that night with Peggy McPeak, when we were all alone . . . in her mother’s living room . . . on the couch . . . well, never mind about that).
Life zipped by without my notice. It was only yesterday, I feel, that Uncle Sam’s letter announced ”Greetings …” and the government drafted me, forcing me to live away from my parents for the first time. Law school graduation could not have been 20 years ago, could it? (Actually, 21.) Where has the time gone as I moved from one career to another, one accomplishment after another, one of life’s goals after another, then another . . . and another?
Where has my life gone? And why couldn’t I have stopped myself from this forced rush to complete a project, to finish a task, to get to that “end result.”
Even if I had to cut corners to get there, get to that final result.
Cutting corners.
We all do it.
We find ways to solve a problem once, and we start to speed up the process the next time, using our experience to push us over the hurdle and to run to the next task. These are all highly commendable achievements we hang on our trophy walls. Many are laudable and admirable when viewed in our halls of fame at home and at our work place.
But what have we given up to get here, to this place where the “there” is hardly any more special than the starting points of most of our endeavors.
If we had only slowed down. If we had but looked at where we were as we ran along our path, we might have seen signs we missed. Signs advising us that life is far more than that next accolade, the next award, the so-called “crowning achievement.”
We would have lived. I mean truly lived in the moment, cherishing it for all its worth, living it to the fullest as we consciously see — perhaps for the first time — how much beauty a single moment has to offer to one who has made themselves aware of that instant moment in time.
That “precious moment.” The moment when you slow down enough to read the print (I wish I could lie, get off the hook, and say I couldn’t read the “fine print,” on the abdomen machine, but hell, I am a trained lawyer. No one would buy it), and realize that you have exercised the wrong way for years. That you . . . I mean, that I . . . have not been getting the true benefit that a pause and a slow down in my life could offer me.
“Slow down.”
Sounds like an old labor tactic we used to discuss when I worked as a union representative and later, a union organizer. Had I, my self, been a little better organized, I would have learned a true prize would eventually go to the slow and sure-footed man or woman ”aware” of and “in” the moment.
Maybe there’s still time for me.
Who’s to Blame For War After War?
I blame God for War.
I blame the Most Powerful Force in the Universe for not using its Almighty Abilities to stop war dead in its tracks.
Why does the Cosmos permit war to occur, when it has all the Love and Goodness we humans offer it day after day in prayer and spiritual offering? Why allow man to kill man in the name of religion, statehood or some foul political purpose?
Young men die (woman too). They never asked for a war, never sat in committee of Congress or behind a desk in a white house. None were privy to some fanatic’s plan to kill civilians indiscriminately. Yet, we fall to our deaths daily.
Lieutenant Vic Ellinger was shot and killed in Vietnam while I forced marched my platoon to come to his help, realizing after two of my men were medavaced out because of heat exhaustion that I was too late. I’ll never forget it decades later. I remember the only guidance I got then was from Lieutenant Colonel Sallucci, who criticized me for allowing my men to walk too close together while in a formation, that a single enemy grenade could wipe out more than one soldier when bunched together.
Why did Vic have to die? I cried out in my silence. Why were we even there? What was our true purpose?
My good friend Charlie Ellis, lieutenant in charge of Second Platoon, was relieved of his duty shortly after two of his troops died in the field. The soldiers, one an experienced man, set up a Claymore Mine, stretching trip wire across the jungle floor, disguising it among the low bushes and leaves. They forgot where they set the wire, walked right into the wire, tripping the devise that triggered the explosion of C-4, killing them almost immediately.
I was relieved of my command after I called mortar fire onto enemy positions, “stepping” back each volley to get it closer and closer to the river across from my position, only to realize after the last request over the radio, the mortar fire had accidently fell on to us, wounding half of the squad I was accompanying in the field. There was an investigation into the munitions, the rounds, the mortar weapons themselves, as well as the human agents who plotted the firing and of course the one who ordered the shots.
Lieutenants were a dime a dozen in Vietnam, especially to a man like Sallucci, a Lieutenant Colonel who had been passed over twice for advancement to what we called a “Full Bird, a full colonel, and that he would be asked to leave the Army if passed over a third time. He wanted “body counts” and none of junior officers in my company provided him with enough. Two 0f us were relieved, and the third one killed.
War. It doesn’t matter who starts it. Why can not the Leader of All — the omnipotent Force Above us — put a stop to it, perhaps removing the gland in a male that causes him to lust for power, to lust for battles just as long as he doesn’t have to be in front of the troops. And while we’re at it, lets hang all the chicken-hawks in government who always push for war as a first solution when they have never experienced combat face to face. Have their child, son or husband/father don the uniform and live in a war zone for a while. See how quickly those hawks pull in their wings and sue for an armistice.
A young man I met a year ago was awarded 100 percent disability by the Veterans Administration for his injuries suffered while in the service. His status was labelled” “Permanent,” which meant that he would received generous benefits for the rest of his life. He was barely 30 years old. But we all knew why he got the award.
The soldier was to have been an escort for chaplains until the morning of 9-11 some eight years ago. Instead, he was ordered to Ground Zero, where he took part in removing the corpses and body parts from the fallen towers, inhaling the fumes that coated his lungs, threatening him — and many others similarly situated — with an early death.
That wonderful young American could be dead today. A victim of a war some terrorist dreamed up for some political or religious purpose, perhaps both,
He will leave behind a small child and a young wife. His life will have been cut in half, maybe more. Why. For God’s sake, why?
I want an answer.
I need some comfort.
I want . . . I need . . . Peace.
Meditation Moderates Me 
