[NOTE: I originally posted this last weekend and pulled it because it wasn't right. This version is not drastically changed, but the changes are important. You might want to see parts I and II before reading this one.]


There is a thin line between genius and insanity, between memory and dream. That line is a vast liminal space, a bardo zone where no reality pertains.

Emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form and form is not other than emptiness. Similarly, feelings, discriminations, compositional factors, and consciousness are also empty.

~ The Heart Sutra

I've glimpsed emptiness. I've felt the purity of that truth. And yet I am always drawn back to the suffering of samsara. How do we attain this clear state when there is so much wounding anchoring us in pain?

I love a women haunted by demons. The demons convince her that she is not worthy of my love, not capable of receiving love.

How can she ever know emptiness?

We all have hungry ghosts, demanding of us attention that is wasted.

She lives, as do most of us, in an in-between place -- not alive, not dead, not fully human. Are we insane? Are we dreaming? Or is all of this a vast nightmare from which we can awaken?



When I was young, I knew that I did not belong. Somehow, I had ended up in the wrong family. Only that knowledge kept me alive when everything went to hell.

Recently, I dreamed that I had stuck a knife into my father's chest, twisted the blade until he fell over, dead. He died of a heart attack. I know where this dream came from. I know now that I blamed myself for my father's death. What child would not feel responsible upon learning that his father intentionally stopped taking the medicines that kept him alive?

What father does that to his children?


Emptiness.

What truth is there in the realization that all is an illusion?

When I was in college I had a girlfriend who liked to play child's games. Maybe she was trying to heal her inner child? We often sat on the swings at the park in the middle of the night. But I never really let myself access that child within.

Now he raises his head and demands attention. A hungry ghost, or something more?

The cries for attention haunt me.

He pleads for a tender heart. Someone to hold him and tell him everything will be OK. But will it?

Can there ever be any real healing for those old wounds?

Nice limbo you have here
Nice limbo you have here
Nice field you have on
Baby go back to your womb
Baby go back to your womb

You grow the apples around me
I'll spit the seeds in your grave
Bead me a necklace
A decade I'll wait

Always the waiting . . . . But for what?




After I killed him, or he left us, nature became my refuge -- the source and destination.



It was only in the wild areas that I could feel at peace. Being alone, with no other people for miles in any direction was bliss. At this point in my life, hell was other people. I always liked Sartre.



When I was five years old, I locked myself in the closet with a box of crayons and drew on the walls. I had a candle for light, and I drew until it burned down. Years later, my younger sister simply drew on the walls in the hallway-- she felt no need to hide.

In high school, I was most likely to die from drugs or alcohol, yet it was my sister who became a crack addict and died in a fire at the age of 36. She left five kids in the world to suffer from her death. My mother died two months later from grief. They said it was the cancer returning, but I know it was the pain of her daughter's death that brought the cancer back, like an invitation.

I'm an orphan. I'll never have answers.


We all have a child living within us that wants to be healed from all the pain it suffered.

What use is emptiness in the face of suffering?

There is no ignorance and no ending of ignorance right through to no aging and death and also no ending of aging and death. In the same way there is no suffering, no cessation, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no lack of attainment.

~ The Heart Sutra

Can suffering really be an illusion?

Can you convince my inner child of that? He would claim that until his suffering is recognized and healed, there can be no realization of
emptiness.


He is correct.



To be continued.


Credits, in order of appeareance:
1. "Pinion," Nine Inch Nails
2. The Heart Sutra
3. Hungry Ghosts
4. Inner Child
4. "Limbo," Throwing Muses
5. Nature
6. "No Exit," Jean-Paul Sartre
7. Inner Child
8. The Heart Sutra
9. Nursery rhyme.

Some things I am grateful for today:

1) Mostly a three day weekend. Nice.

2) Some clients I haven't seen in a while are coming back to training.

3) I continue to explore some of the exiled pain of my childhood. Not fun, but necessary. And I am grateful that I am able to do the work.

What are you grateful for today?
.

The Minutes

Do the minutes ever coalesce into anything other than loss? The dark night, a dog barking in the apartment below mine. So many ways to say, "I am forgotten." But so few ways to say, "I am saved."

I do not believe in God. Maybe a hell of fire and brimstone awaits me, or maybe when this body ceases to breathe there is nothing, an emptiness that contains all.

We fight for minutes, seek solace in escaping the hands of the clock, but when the moment comes, we are unprepared. Afraid. Forsaken in a desert of doubt.

Half past twelve and still the dog barks, its owners still out. If for one moment any of us could fathom what comes next, there would be no need for alarm.

But we do not know, so we fear that which is a mystery.
.

Attachment is the root of most of my suffering, so this is a very useful dharma quote for me.

Attachment increases desire, without producing any satisfaction. There are two types of desire, unreasonable and reasonable. The first is an affliction founded on ignorance, but the second is not. To live, you need resources; therefore, desire for sufficient material things is appropriate. Such feelings as, "This is good; I want this. This is useful," are not afflictions. It is also desirable to achieve altruism, wisdom, and liberation. This kind of desire is suitable; indeed, all human development comes out of desire, and these aspirations do not have to be an affliction.

...when you have attachment to material things, it is best to desist from those very activities that promote more attachment. Satisfaction is helpful when it comes to material things, but not with respect to spiritual practice. Objects to which we become attached are something to be discarded, whereas spiritual progress is something to be adopted--it can be developed limitlessly, even in old age.

~ From How to Expand Love by H.H. the Dalai Lama, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins.

[NOTE: It might be useful to see parts I, II, and III before reading this post, but it's not essential.]


Pain is the best teacher. So why do we spend so much energy trying to escape it, repress it, bury it in the dark recesses of our psyches? Without pain, how could we ever know pleasure?

Our pain is so rooted in our lopsided view of reality. Who ever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It's promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; they are inseparable.

Sophia is the face of my soul, the woman who lives inside this body, the energy that animates this flesh. Her wings carry me above myself.

She alone, among my many selves, embraces pain, courts it, seduces it as a lover.

It burns her wings. Grounds her in the flesh of this world.

Pain is masculine is so many ways, but the experience of it depends on the feminine within me.



So many parts of me are broken. Especially the part that loves, or not so much broken, as wounded, betrayed, left wandering in the wilderness of doubt.

this is the first day of my last days
i built it up now i take it apart climbed up real high now fall down real far
no need for me to stay the last thing left i just threw it away
i put my faith in god and my trust in you
now there's nothing more fucked up i could do
wish there was something real wish there was something true
wish there was something real in this world full of you
i'm the one without a soul i'm the one with this big fucking hole

Once upon a time, on a hot summer morning in Louisville, I became a raven. I was 26 years old. That day changed my life forever. I finally knew who I was, where I had come from, what I had to do. Nothing has ever been the same since.

I left the woman I loved a few days later.

With wings carried by the wind, I flew over ocean to a land offshore, far from anything I had ever known in this life. I felt the freedom that I was born to know. The ocean was so far below me as my wings carried me through the clear sky.

With this new form came a new understanding, a new awareness, a new sense of what my life could be. I knew in that moment that suffering is not my true nature. I knew that I could be anything I set my mind to becoming. I knew that love is the true essence of my life.

But visions must be reconciled with reality. I have spent the last 14 years trying to embody that vision, trying to earn that awareness.



One night in college, after drinking most of a half gallon of red wine, I realized that pain is inescapable. I decided to carry that realization in my flesh.

I took the stainless steel cross that was given me upon my confirmation, held it in a candle flame until it glowed red, then placed it on the soft flesh of my inner forearm. I left it there until the room wreaked with the scent of burning flesh.

I still carry that scar. A reminder that the body is mortal.



I once dreamed I killed the Raven of my soul:

A thing held too tightly dissolves,
as in a magician's trick,
the one where a raven vanishes
through some slight of hand
and there is only the absence of the raven.

It's like that, only different.
The raven doesn't really vanish, it dies,
its neck snapped by fingers
clenched, struggling against
the ethereal power of wings.

But magicians don't use ravens,
so it's not like that at all.
The raven struggles, its wings
attempting the defiance of weight
the earthbound can only envy.

But the fingers hold, and they are my hands
killing the messenger, the bird
I once trusted to reveal my soul.
The snapped neck, a hush over all things,
no awareness, no applause, no magic.

Maybe it is like that. We kill that which we cannot bear to witness, to own, to hold as who we are.


When I was a boy, I used to climb trees to be closer to my brothers. I sat among the highest limbs, cradled in the branches of pines, feeling the freedom of being closer to sky.

One day, the wind shook me from those branches, dropped me limb to limb until I hit the ground.

I knew that day that I dare not breach the order of things. I knew I was mortal and subject to the laws of gravity, of mortality, of the flesh.


So many days spent avoiding the awareness of pain. That which is inescapable. But no more. I am pain, I am the seeking of pain as a teacher. If I am ever to know pleasure again, I must befriend the pain I have sought so long to avoid.


To be continued.


Sources, in order of appearance:
1. Pema Chodron, Comfortable With Uncertainty, pg. 94
2. "Fallen," Jason Beam
3. "Broken," Nine Inch Nails, the whole album
4. "Wish," Nine Inch Nails
5. Raven Mandala, Nathalie Parenteau
6. "The Magician," William Harryman
7. Golden Trees

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:

The First Step

 

The first step... is to cut off the chain of associated concepts and words that flood the mind, holding it with recollection on the present, on what is. Thus, in a famous verse, the Buddha used to say,

Don't chase after the past,
Don't seek the future,
The past is gone
The future hasn't come
But see clearly on the spot
That object which is now
While finding and living in
A still, unmoving state of mind

~ Bhikkhu Mangalo, The Practice of Recollection; From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith.

~ Bhikkhu Mangalo, The Practice of Recollection; From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith.

[NOTE: It might be useful to see parts I, II, III, and IV before reading this post, but it's not essential.]

So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

What manner of life do we desire? How do I wish to spend my limited days in this flesh? Having reached mid-life, I have grown weary of looking back, even though I see the need of it so that I may walk forward carrying less weight, less grief, less pain.

These are the ravens of my soul,
Sloping above the lonely fields
And cawing, cawing.
I have released them now,
And sent them wavering down the sky,
Learning the slow witchery of the wind,
And crying on the farthest fences of the world.

I came to the desert to do my metaphorical 40 days and 40 nights of wandering -- an initiation. More than five years later, the searing heat has burned away many memories and left me more whole that when I first set foot on this foreign soil.

But the process is not yet complete. It's time to stop wandering.

Following the separation and the initiation, there must be the return.

It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.

We are all dying. Year after year, day after day, moment by moment, we inch closer to our final breath. Are you ready for the next adventure, the mystery of what comes next?

One night when I was only 25 years old, I saw my death mask. I was in a sensory deprivation tank, listening to shamanic drumming, doing holotropic breathwork, and then it came, the face of my death. I was terrified. It took me more than an hour to get grounded again with the help of my housemate, a massage therapist.

For days I was obsessed with my death, with the eventual end of this life. I could smell the decay of my flesh, hear the diminishing of my heartbeat, see the lifeforce draining from my body. I did not want to die. I still had no idea who I was or why I was put on this earth.





Our pain teaches us the beauty of our lives. Without pain, we are nothing. Lost. In our greatest weaknesses are to be found our greatest strengths. My greatest weakness is loss.

All the women I have loved have left me. But all of them found some healing in being with me. Why is that? Why should my loss heal others? What is it about me that can heal the pain of those I love?

I don't know. But I do know that it is not about me. It is not something I do. Perhaps in my own loss I have learned to create a safe space for those I love to heal from their losses. It is not about me.

There is some alchemy in all this. A distillation of essences. In the glaring light of love the nigredo can be purified.

Death comes for us all, one way or another. Every loss we suffer prepares us for that final loss, the last breath.



Is it possible that a man be born of Raven blood? Can the mythic have any hold in a world of reason? I know I am not born of the man who was my father. I am not of his flesh, nor the flesh of my mother. My DNA is something other, not of this life.

I know who I am. From where I came. Whether or not reason can accept this truth it irrelevant.

Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course; it will make no noise, it will not remind you of its swiftness. Silent it will glide on; it will not prolong itself at the command of a king, or at the applause of the populace. Just as it was started on its first day, so it will run; nowhere will it turn aside, nowhere will it delay. And what will be the result? You have been engrossed, life hastens by; meanwhile death will be at hand, for which, willy nilly, you must find leisure.

I do not believe in fate. I do not believe I chose this life prior to my birth. I believe in free will, however naive that may be.

We pretend death will never come for us. We live as though we have forever, but there is not enough time for such a life. At any moment, this could be our last breath.


I don't know how many days are left to me, but I will not waste another day in loss, in pain, in memory of the past. This is my life, my passion, my gift.



Over the years I have become intimate with pain, with loss. These feelings have informed the purpose of my life until now. Their flames have consumed me. But I am not this pain, nor this loss. I am more.


I do not believe in fate, but I do believe in choice, and I have chosen to live a life of service.

I want to be of service to my fellow human beings until the last breath leaves my lungs.



Credits, in order of appearance:
1. Seneca, "On the Shortness of Life"
2. William Everson, "These Are the Ravens"
3. Alex Grey, "Holy Fire"
4. Seneca
5. Graveyard of Dunfermline Abbey
6. Tool, "Eulogy" live
7. Grief
8. Seneca
9. Alex Grey, "Reaching"

From Dark Roasted Blend: Fungus, Lichen, & Moss. A nice collection of photos.

Even though the title of this article sounds like a name for some obscure lawyer firm, the beauties in question usually fare far worse in terms of reputation. Most people shudder if they happen to touch the slimy fungus or fruiting moss, and rarely have an inclination to give them a closer look. A few Russian photographers from the Photosight.ru group have braved the damp silent woods and came up with a veritable photographic delights: (sent in by Kiriko, thanks)

There are many more cool photos at Dark Roasted Blend.

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:

All is flux

 

The Buddha stressed the dynamic nature of existence. This resonates with the ideas of some early Greek philosophers, such as Heraclitus, who maintained that, "All is flux" and "You can't step into the same river twice."

Now, all this sounds like common sense. Yest there is something in our minds and emotions that kicks back at the idea of change. We are forever trying to break the dynamic world-dance, which is a unity, into separate "things," which we then freeze in the ice of thought. But the world-dance doggedly refuses to remain fragmented and frozen. It swirls on, changing from moment to moment. laughing at all our pitiful attempts to organize and control it.

In order to live skillfully, in harmony with the dynamic Universe, it is essential to accept the reality of change and impermanence. The wise person therefore travels lightly, with a minimum of clutter, maintaining the proverbial "open mind" in all situations, for he or she knows that tomorrow's reality will not be the same as today's. He or she will also have learned the divine art of letting go -- which means not being attached to people and possessions and situations, but rather, when the time for parting comes, allowing that to happen graciously.

~ John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism; From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith.

 

Quote of the day:

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."
~ Frank Zappa

Image of the day:


BODY
~ Plateau Busters -- "Sooner or later, bubba, your progress is going to come to a dull thud. It's no reason to hang yourself from the chin bar with a stretch band, though, as there are plenty of ways to bust through that nasty plateau."
~ A Role For Glucose-Sensing Neurons In Type 2 Diabetes Identified By Researchers -- "In cases of Type 2 diabetes, the body's cells fail to appropriately regulate blood glucose levels. Research has suggested that this results from two simultaneous problems: the improper functioning of pancreatic beta cells and the impairment of insulin's actions on target tissues, including the liver, fat and muscles."
~ Viewing Food As Healthy Often Encourages Overeating -- "An important new study from the Journal of Consumer Research explains the "American obesity paradox": the parallel rise in obesity rates and the popularity of healthier food. In a series of four studies, the researchers reveal that we over-generalize "healthy" claims. In fact, consumers chose beverages, side dishes, and desserts containing up to 131% more calories when the main dish was positioned as "healthy"."
~ Avocados Prove Fruitful In Fighting Oral Cancer -- "The next time you reach for the guacamole and chips, you'll be doing something good for your body. Avocados are loaded with healthy monounsaturated fat,* and now researchers say they might also help your body fight off cancer. Renee Bean always tries to make fresh fruits and vegetables a part of her recipes. As a chef, she says they can make her dishes taste better. As an oral cancer survivor, she believes they might actually help her feel better."
~ Tour de France cyclists have big hearts (AP) -- "Riding the grueling Tour de France bike race takes strength, stamina — and perhaps a heart nearly 40 percent bigger than normal."
~ Tips to build muscles mass at any age -- "If you think 20 to 30 minutes of cardio a few days a week is all you need to keep your health in check over the next few decades, it's time to wake up and smell the iron."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ 12 Secrets to a Happy Life -- "Find out 12 ways to be happier."
~ Study Suggests That We Should Re-Think Learning Methods For Long-Term Retention -- "When you look back on your school days, doesn't it seem like you studied all the time? However, most of us seem to have retained almost nothing from our early immersion in math, history, and foreign language.Were we studying the wrong way during all those wee hours? Well, as it turns out we may have been."
~ Shortage of Talk Therapy for Bipolar -- "Psychological therapy can greatly boost the effectiveness of drugs in treating bipolar disorder, but these specialized talk therapies aren't as widely available as they should be, experts say...." Blame the HMOs.
~ Dream Symbols 15: Water, Swimming and Drowning -- "Water in dreams is often described as being a symbol of the unconscious or subconscious mind. At that level, if we find ourselves in water, swimming, floundering, drowning, trying to reach an unattainable shore, mingling with an assorted selection of other creatures, such as snakes, dragons, whales, dolphins, etc., we could well assume that the dream is telling us something."
~ Taking Personal Responsibility -- "Personal responsibility is the most important ethic you can exercise. With the cultivation of personal responsibility comes growth in all areas of life. It is a matter of taking charge of your own self and your circumstances through well-directed thoughts, words, and deeds."
~ Altruism Emerges When Thoughts Focus On God -- "Thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behaviour and generosity, according to University of British Columbia psychology researchers. In a study to be published in the September issue of Psychological Science journal, researchers investigated how thinking about God and notions of a higher power influenced positive social behaviour, specifically cooperation with others and generosity to strangers."
~ Mind and brain disorder encyclopedia now free online -- "The Dana Guide to Brain Health is a fantastic book that contains a wealth of practical information about keeping your brain healthy, maintaining mental sharpness, and dealing with problems when they arise. Even better, the section on mind and brain disorders has now been made fully searchable and freely available on Dana's website."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ State Of the Union -- "One of the enduring beauties of college football season is the way that it unveils itself to the world. While the N.F.L. slogs through bad preseason games to fill its owners’ coffers, college football opens with a snap, like an artist pulling a sheet off of a canvas. And sometimes, there’s an unexpected work of beauty after the toil of the off-season."
~ U.S. is king of the Americas -- "Star-studded but also dedicated and unselfish, American team completes romp through Olympic qualifying tournament with 118-81 rout of Argentina." Remember when USA basketball was a force of nature? Looks like that is finally true again as the best players played as a team and made it look easy.
~ Wistful over lost dreams at Summer of Love fest -- "Some of the biggest musical stars of the 1960s counterculture gathered in San Francisco on Sunday for a concert to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, yet backstage many voiced disappointment about the era's unfulfilled ideals."
~ Psychiatrists least religious of U.S. doctors: study -- "U.S. psychiatrists generally are less likely to be Protestant or Roman Catholic than other types of doctors, according to a study released on Monday."
~ Labor Day Meditation -- "Today is Labor Day in the United States. A product of the labor movement, Labor Day was established in 1882 (it became a federal holiday in 1894) as a day to celebrate and acknowledge the achievements of American workers — though you’d hardly know it from the drunken barbeques and (non-drunken) white sales that are our preferred means of celebrating the day today."
~ Secret Report: Corruption Is 'Norm' Within Iraqi Government -- "A Baghdad embassy study says Prime Minister Maliki is blocking corruption probes, his government is partly controlled by criminal gangs, and the U.S. is doing little to clean up the mess."
~ The Vanishing American Vacation -- "Compared to people in other developed countries, Americans don't ask for more vacation time, don't take all the vacation time their employers give them and continue to work while they are on vacation."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ 500 days at Venus, and the surprises keep coming -- "Venus Express has now orbited Earth`s twin for 500 Earth days, completing as many orbits. While the satellite maintains steady and excellent performance, the planet continues to surprise and amaze us."
~ Studying evidence from Ice Age lakes -- "During the last Ice Age, the ice dammed enormous lakes in Russia. The drainage system was reversed several times and the rivers flowed southwards. A group of geologists is now investigating what took place when the ice melted and the lakes released huge volumes of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean."
~ Stellar Firework in a Whirlwind -- "Stars do not like to be alone. Indeed, most stars are members of a binary system, in which two stars circle around each other in an apparently never-ending cosmic ballet. But sometimes, things can go wrong."
~ European Union OKs fusion project -- "European scientists will build on U.S. military research to try to create laser-based nuclear fusion aimed at replacing fossil fuels, it was reported."
~ Hurricane Felix: Some Staggering Facts [The Intersection] -- "Here's some data I recently compiled. First, concerning Hurricane Felix . . . ."
~ Rare Breeds Of Farm Animals Face Extinction -- "With the world's first global inventory of farm animals showing many breeds of African, Asian, and Latin American livestock at risk of extinction, scientists have called for the rapid establishment of genebanks to conserve the sperm and ovaries of key animals critical for the global population's future survival."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Effing the Ineffable -- "Many people believe that mystical experience--the wordless experience of "Ultimate Reality"--cannot be translated into words. That is, it is "ineffable." But Ken Wilber disagrees. Actually, he doesn't disagree completely. All experiences are ineffable. We can't perfectly describe our common experience of a sunset or an orgasm any more than we can describe mystical experience. But we CAN use words--i.e, "signifiers"--to represent sunsets and orgasms pretty well if we really try, and so we can also use them to represent mystical experience."
~ Buddhist Geeks 35: Theory, Yoga, & Art -- "In our last segment with art and meditation professor Robert Spellman he shares with us a key distinction between the theoretical and the yogic and how that important distinction relates to artistic practice."
~ Rounding Up the Buddhas - September 2, 2007 -- Good links.
~ A Post-Metaphysical Interpretation of Synchronicity -- "I've already linked to this in a previous post, but i thought it was worth its own entry. Several months ago i recorded this piece with Ken Wilber, during one of the live conference calls at Integral Spiritual Center, and i found the discussion to be absolutely fascinating. Synchronicity has long been a defining texture in my own spiritual path, and was a topic which, until this call, i had never heard Ken speak or write about."
~ Belief and Disbelief -- "A new insight. Well, it’s new to me. Like all my “insights,” it has probably been perfectly obvious for years to many other people, but it came to me yesterday with a certain clarity as I was reading a translation of The Heart Sutra by Red Pine...."
~ Are You My Mother? -- "I don't know how long I stood there vibrating in her belly. I was so totally eclipsed by her that I could not have conjured a scrap of my personal story to save my life." Beautiful post.

.

The summer issue of Buddhadharma, which I am just now getting around to reading, has an interesting discussion: Forum: Too Much Meditation?

The website only features the introduction, but in the article, Stephen Batchelor (predictably) makes the first acknowledgment that Buddhism is about more than meditation or traditions such as begging for alms or submission to a teacher -- it is about the Nobel Eightfold Path.

As the name indicates, there are eight elements in the Noble Eightfold Path, and these are divided into three basic categories^[1] as follows:

• Wisdom (Sanskrit: prajñā, Pāli: paññā)

1. Right view

2. Right intention

• Ethical conduct (Sanskrit: śīla, Pāli: sīla)

3. Right speech

4. Right action

5. Right livelihood

• Mental discipline (Sanskrit and Pāli: samādhi)

6. Right effort

7. Right mindfulness

8. Right concentration

In all of the elements of the Noble Eightfold Path, the word "right" is a translation of the word samyañc (Sanskrit) or sammā (Pāli), which denotes completion, togetherness, and coherence, and which can also carry the sense of "perfect" or "ideal".

While right effort, mindfulness, and concentration are important, they are only three of the eight things we should focus on in trying to become better people. For most of us, simply trying to follow the Noble Eightfold Path is more than enough work for this lifetime.

While it is not essential, according to most teachers, to follow each of the eight steps in order, it is certainly crucial to have the first one in place before any of the others, since it is concerned primarily with the Four Noble Truths. Without the Four Noble Truths, it will be very difficult to hold right view.

I like to think of the Noble Eightfold Path as a kind of Buddhist integral practice. Each of the steps on the path, which can and should be practiced simultaneously, concerns a specific area of our lives, but as a whole they address body, mind, emotions, spirit, our actions in the world, and how we support ourselves. This is as integral as it gets.

Meditation (the last two steps: mindfulness and concentration) are definitely important, and this practice alone might make as happier, more balanced, and less reactive, but this practice alone will lead anyone to a true cessation of suffering. You can have all the non-dual experiences you want, but each time you return to samsara, your life will be no better than it was (aside from some lingering bliss).

As Chan master Sheng Yen writes in that same issue of Buddhadharma:

Buddhism emphasizes the need to practice in order to realize one's own buddhanature. But this does not mean that someone who perceives buddhanature is no longer subject to vexation. After experiencing buddhanature for the first time, one still has habits and propensities that can lead to impure thoughts and impure conduct; greed and aversion may still arise.

Master Sheng Yen advocates we practice the four foundations of mindfulness and the four proper exertions in order to purify the mind, but this alone, if you ask me, is not enough (no doubt Yen would think so, too).

In the discussion that got me thinking about this, I saw echoes of the Sam Harris piece from last winter, Killing the Buddha, in which Harris advocates for a Buddhism stripped of the Buddha. This is a distinctly Western idea, that we have to isolate the "technology" of Buddhism (meditation) from the rest of Buddhist practice. Ken Wilber makes essentially the same argument in The Marriage of Sense and Soul.

If Buddhism were reduced to merely a systematic technology of meditation, much would be lost. Sure there are a lot of superstitions in the various versions of Buddhism; in fact there are all manner of irrational leftovers from lower developmental levels. But as I have argued many times before, there are still a lot of people on this earth who live at those developmental levels and for whom those superstitions have incredible value. If Buddhism is to serve its role of helping people develop, we have to reach them where they live.

.

Last night I finished a five post sequence of therapeutic blogging -- my collage sequence -- that I had been working on for a couple of weeks. These posts may not have been of much interest to anyone but me, but they served to reveal a lot of shadow material that I needed to explore. When I sat down to create each collage, I had no idea what would come up -- that was the beauty of it.

There's a certain creativity in generating posts from a lot of disparate sources. Those posts were deeply personal, but knowing that they might be read by others fostered a need to be honest with myself. The collage format also allowed me to work with various levels of meaning -- mythic, rational, and spiritual. In addition, the format allowed my many selves to speak their truths, however partial most of them are.

Bringing light into the shadow is necessary, and often painful, but it's the transformation and integration of that material that makes all the difference. That's the next task.

I'm grateful for those who read and/or commented, but I am ever more grateful that the blogging format allows for such an exploration.

What are you grateful for today?
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The Denver Post has a pretty comprehensive list of new books this fall, which is usually when the good stuff comes out. Here's the intro to the article:

Here we go again. It's almost fall, and that means the publishing houses are pulling out the big guns, oddly enough just in time for the book world to have its say ahead of the holiday season. Maybe it's coincidental.

Anyway, in the next few months, look for new fiction from such heavyweights as Alice Sebold, Tom Perrotta, Andrea Barrett, Patricia Cornwell, Richard Russo, William Trevor, Philip Roth and many more.

A newcomer, Brock Clarke, is stirring up interest in his "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Houses in New England."

And check the shelves for new nonfiction from the likes of Alan Greenspan, Robert Morgan, Paul Krugman, Edward Ball and Susan Faludi.

 

Go check out the list.

Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle offers a nice parable about being filled with certainties and opinions -- and why we need beginner's mind.

Full

 

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full then kept on pouring. The professor watched the cup overflow until he could no longer restrain himself.

"it is overfull. No more will go in."

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

~ Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith.

 

Quote of the day:

"Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves."
~ Carl Sagan

Image of the day:



BODY
~ 10 ways to eat healthier -- "As someone who is not genetically gifted with a fat-burning mechanism that some of my college teammates and friends seem to have, I understand that it can be hard to lose that extra weight that keeps us from looking in the mirror and being completely satisfied with the image staring back." Interesting suggestions.
~ Best of the Best of the Back -- "Dorian Yates had a big back, but he trained it wrong. You heard me, wrong. At least that's what Scott Abel says. But you know something? After we read this article, Scott convinced us. We're now doing it the Abel way."
~ Prostate Cancer Prevented By Compound In Red Wine -- "Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have found that nutrients in red wine may help reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer.The study involved male mice that were fed a plant compound found in red wine called resveratrol, which has shown anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties. Other sources of resveratrol in the diet include grapes, raspberries, peanuts and blueberries." You'd have to become a wino to get enough resveratrol, so find a good supplement.
~ No Weight Loss Advantage to Vegetarian Diets -- "Following a vegetarian diet does not yield a larger amount of weight loss than following a non-vegetarian diet according to a study published in the International Journal of Obesity."
~ More vitamin D could mean fewer cancers: study -- "Thousands of cases of breast and colon cancers might be averted each year if people in colder climates raised their vitamin D levels, researchers estimate in a new report."
~ Not Just for Weight Loss: Healthy Diet Cuts Cancer Risk -- "A balanced diet can reduce cancer risk."
~ Born lucky: Scientists discover ‘skinny’ gene -- "Scientists now say they have discovered the “skinny” gene. And they’ve found this lucky batch of DNA in a variety of animals, including humans, according to a report published Tuesday in the journal Cell Metabolism."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Forget What They Say: Men Go for Looks -- "Men go for looks, while women look for more, study finds."
~ Family therapy most helpful for teens with bulimia -- "Family therapy is more effective than traditional solo psychotherapy in helping teens with bulimia to abstain from binging and purging, a new study shows."
~ Emotional wiring different in men and women -- "The romantic guy might be found right on our college campuses. A recent study finds male undergraduate students were more likely than women to choose intimate relationships over their careers and education."
~ 7 Simple Stress-Reduction Strategies -- "There are countless books, audio tapes and Web sites with similar stress management advice. But here are some simple, everyday things we can do to reduce stress."
~ The Story Behind the Rise in Bipolar Diagnoses -- "Our news story about the increase in bipolar diagnoses in children and teens is eye-opening to everyone who reads it. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry basically found a huge, 40-fold increase in the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and teens."
~ 7 Effective Ways to Deal With Criticism -- "Nobody likes being criticised but, unfortunately it is a fact of life. To be able to respond to criticism with nobility and detachment is an important life skill, which few people have. If we respond to criticism without careful consideration, it can easily lead to unnecessary suffering."
~ Where do the boundaries of the mind end? -- "In the previous blog I discussed the idea that dualism was flawed and that some form of monism provided a much more satisfactory explanation of the ontology of the physical and the mental. According to this monist view, there is only one reality. Physicalists like to call it the physical and deny the mental altogether. I tend to avoid this and stick to the idea that there really is only one reality, its just when talking about it, or indeed practising Cognitive Science there are multiple levels of analysis that need to be accounted for to provide a satisfactory account; physical, phenomenal, functional, etc."
~ 30 Happiness Tips: Program Your Life for Optimum Enjoyment -- "For many of us, the goal of life isn't ultimate wealth, a massive amount of stuff, or the perfect car. It's happiness, plain and simple."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Why Do People Do Evil? -- "Decent people have sought to identify the roots of evil since the first indecent person inflicted cruelty on an innocent person. And people have come up with one or more of nine explanations, most of which are indeed valid."
~ The (Josh) Marshall Plan -- "Today, Marshall presides over a staff of four reporters—one of whom also serves as deputy editor—three associate editors, and a small army of unpaid interns. Their work is posted on a quartet of interconnected sites: Talking Points Memo, as Marshall’s original blog is known; TPM Café, a two-year-old site devoted to policy and culture debates; TPM Muckraker, a year-and-a-half-old project that trawls for political scandal; and TPM Election Central. In total, the sites draw roughly 400,000 page views on an average weekday."
~ Books: Walt Whitman's Only Novel Comes Back from Strange Obscurity -- "After decades out of print, Walt Whitman's only novel comes back from its strange obscurity"
~ Travails of an Outcast -- "Junot Díaz’s wondrous first novel is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets “Star Trek” meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West."
~ Iowa Fallout: Huckabee as the New 'Darling' -- "Ex-Arkansas governor could use this week's debate to keep up the momentum."
~ Restoring Classroom Justice -- "Restorative justice programs focus on using community networks and dialogue to reconcile the offender to the community. "It's about trying to find resolution rather than being punitive," says Mosley. The growing movement for restorative justice in schools is partially a response to "zero tolerance" policies that require students to be suspended or expelled for certain violations."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ 'Clearest' images taken of space -- "A team of astronomers from the US and the UK has obtained some of the clearest pictures of space ever taken."
~ Congo's Rare Mountain Gorillas Caught in Fighting -- "Reuters reports: Rebels in eastern Congo have occupied part of a reserve protecting rare mountain gorillas, putting the endangered primates in the crossfire of an escalating political and ethnic conflict, conservationists say."
~ New nanotechnique producing small things in large quantities -- "Although relatively new to the market, liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions may soon be obsolete, thanks to a new technique created by University of Houston professors."
~ Archaeologists Discover Ancient Beehives -- "Archaeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found."
~ Endangered Turtle Nests Found in Texas -- "Wildlife officials counted a record 128 Kemp's ridley sea turtle nests this summer on Texas beaches."
~ Microsoft Loses Vote on File Standards -- "Microsoft Corp. has failed in a first step to win enough support to make the data format behind its flagship Office software a global standard, the International Standards Organization said Tuesday."
~ Experts: Expect 6 More Hurricanes in 2007 -- "The worst may not be over, warns a new report."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Paying attention to what’s behind the curtain -- "When I explore how a sense of I and Other is formed, I find three general zones...."
~ 'Integral Flow' ~ a community blog initiative -- "New! An IRG experiment: an open source blog for a community of Integrals on the Leading Edge:integral flow This blog is currently accepting new members!!! Is there INTEGRAL BEYOND INTEGRAL???"
~ Thoughts as sense field -- "When I first learned the labeling practice, differentiating the six sense fields of sensation, taste, smell, sound, sight and thought, thoughts came up saying thought, that is not really a sense field, but OK, I can see it can be called that to not make it too complicated."
~ The Science Delusion? Review of Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion -- "It’s rare for a book about science to polarize the general public, but when such a book takes on religious questions, the combination is highly combustible."
~ Tibetans Oppose China on Reincarnations -- "A Chinese order claiming Beijing must approve all of Tibet's spiritual leaders is an attempt to further repress and undermine the religious culture of the Himalayan region, the Tibetan government-in-exile said Sunday."
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Some things I am grateful for today:

1) A good workout.
2) Eggs.
3) My health.
4) My all-time favorite animated film -- Spirited Away -- is available on-line, so I am posting it at IOC. But please, go rent it so you see it in its full beauty, open your heart, and watch this amazing film.

What are you grateful for today?

This is a cool list from the Ririan Project -- check out the site for more cool stuff. You'll have to go to the site to get the wisdom that goes with each item on the list. As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the better attempts at getting workable truths from childhood experience.

10 Big Lessons from Little Kids

“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.”

 

- Franklin P. Jones

Have you ever watched a child completely engrossed in a project? They have the unusual ability to be serious about what they’re doing without taking it too seriously. You can do the same with your life. You can live every day with more focus, and every week with more motivation.

Here’s what every child knows that you may have forgotten. See if you can apply some of these lessons to your adult life.

1. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Even when there’s not a prize in the bottom of the box.

2. Homework blows. Bring work home with you and it’ll ruin your night. And your marriage. And your family. And your life.

3. The only way to know how something works is to completely disassemble it. (This is still good advice when tackling a complex problem. Your plasma TV? Not so much).

4. There’s a reason they don’t give credit cards to 8-year-olds. You’re supposed to save up money before you buy a new toy.

5. Asking questions is how you figure things out. Lots and lots of questions.

6. The coolest adults were the ones who took the time to listen to you. You still want to grow up to be a cool adult, right?

7. Your body was designed for throwing baseballs, shooting hoops, and jumping off diving boards and stuff. In the secret language of children, the word “fitness” doesn’t exist. It’s called “having fun.”

8. Playtime is important and laughter feels good.

9. Too much of anything will give you a tummy ache. Like, say, bourbon.

10. Try to be the friend you were when you were 12: fun-loving and loyal, with no strings attached.

I found this page through Digg -- an amazing collection of photographs. Here are a few that I like, but there are A LOT more of the photo.net page for Maria Cano.

Quote of the day:

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
~ Albert Einstein

Image of the day:


BODY
~ Genetic variation greater than expected -- "Now, with today's publication of my diploid genome in the public access journal PLOS Biology as the first individual genome, it seems to have only increased people's fascination with what it's like to have your genome in hand. The difference between then and now is that many of the questions today center on what you can learn from reading your genetic code and how soon they can get their genomes sequenced."
~ Cooking the Power Foods, Part II -- "Chef Lisa is at it again, combining wild-ass foods! In part one, she mixed blueberries and porkchops! Now she's gone completely mad, actually mixing pumpkins and sweet potatoes! How long will Mother Nature put up with this!?!"
~ Turning On Fat Burning Gene To Make You Lose Weight -- "Tweaking a gene that influences whether your body accumulates or burns up fat may not be such a far-fetched dream for millions of overweight/obese people around the world. Scientists in the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA believe that may have found a way of doing just this. They say that turning up the volume on "the skinny gene" could eventually lead to treatment that prevents and treats obesity and diabetes."
~ Study Demonstrates Martek's Algal DHA Oil Improves Blood Triglyceride Lipid Levels -- "Martek's life's DHA(TM) from microalgae is effective in reducing the level of triglycerides in male hypertriglyceridemic patients, according to a study published in the current issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In this study DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) alone was effective, without EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), the other omega 3 commonly found in fish oil, in reducing triglycerides."
~ Seeing the Body as Never Before -- "An amazing look at the body at work, from fat cells to salivary glands."
~ Exercise can help heart repair itself -- "Having a bad heart doesn't mean you can skip exercise, doctors said Wednesday. In fact, it may even help your heart to repair itself. Research presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting showed that exercise sparks the creation of new heart vessels."
~ Niacin drug controls cholesterol, study shows -- "An experimental cholesterol treatment touted by drugmaker Merck & Co. significantly reduced artery-clogging fats in late-stage testing."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Neuronal receptor linked to mild cognitive impairment & Alzheimer's -- "Mild cognitive impairment affects many cognitive functions, particularly memory. People with mild cognitive impairment are 3-4 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's Disease; hence, it is regarded as a transition stage between normal age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's Disease."
~ Tapping into the Fountain of Youth -- "The Fountain of Youth is inside of all of us. To tap into it requires some action on your part, but the good news is that the benefits from this fountain are accessible to all. Will it make a 70 year old look like a 20 year old? No, but it can make you feel like you’re 20 years old, and how you feel is the main thing. OK, looking young is nice too, but keep reading because these tips can make you look younger too."
~ 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People -- "With a twist to the common list of habits that are useful to establish, here are 7 habits that you do best to avoid."
~ David Brooks Interview -- "Today I’m happy to share an exclusive interview with David Brooks, an award-winning professional speaker and trainer who has taught more than 10,000 business professionals to speak and write clearly, concisely, and confidently."
~ Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life -- "A simple life has a different meaning and a different value for every person. For me, it means eliminating all but the essential, eschewing chaos for peace, and spending your time doing what’s important to you."
~ 10 Benefits of Power Napping, and How to Do It -- "College students and kindergartens love them. Now, there may be proof that catching a few zzz’s in the afternoon can be beneficial to your health."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Kathleen Reardon: Memo To Dowd and the Press: Don't Waste Our Time -- "Here we go again with celebrity journalists assigning derogatory labels and imagined intentions to presidential hopefuls -- and right after the Vanity Fair wake-up-stupid memo to all of us. Dowd got a twofer by attacking Obama and Clinton in one go. She took a strong step toward helping the Republicans while claiming to be disappointed in Obama. If she's an Obama supporter, I wouldn't want to meet his enemies."
~ MediaCulture: The Iraq News Black-Out: How the Press Spent its Summer Vacation -- "Americans are hungry for news out of Iraq. News directors prefer covering Paris Hilton."
~ Jorie Graham: Introduction to the Best American Poetry -- "In her 1990 introduction, Graham explains how and why contemporary poetry uses devices that break the fluid progress of the poem and destabilize the reader's relationship to the illusion of the poem as text spoken by a single speaker in deep thought." This is a classic essay for me -- it helped shape my appreciation of "post-modern" poetry and how it fits into the tradition.
~ 2008's Known Unknowns -- "The 2008 election coverage began so early that voters are already blocking out the static from all the rehashed political talking points. Utne.com takes a look at some events and issues that could shake things up."
~ Thompson Enters, Stage Right -- "While his competition debates, the actor/senator will jump into the race from Jay Leno's couch." How fitting.
~ Bush Admits to Crying in Biography -- "President Bush told the author of a new book on his presidency, "I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve" or show anything less than steadfastness in public." Uh, yeah, sure, whatever you say. . . .
~ Craig Reversal: GOP Shock Turns to Anger -- "Senate GOP leaders, stunned that Sen. Larry Craig is considering reversing his decision to quit September 30 over his guilty plea in a men's room sex scandal, say that he should still step down."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Finally, the New Range of iPods -- "After weeks of speculation, Steve Jobs finally unveils an entirely new line of iPods."
~ Kenyan scientists save Grevy's zebras from possible extinction -- "Kenyan scientists said Wednesday they had rescued endangered Grevy's zebras from possible extinction after an outbreak of deadly anthrax last year and were working to increase their population."
~ Pillar of Invisibility -- "While we are a long way off from the lightweight, high-performance, magical cloak of Harry Potter, Muggle physicists have been busy designing ways to make invisibility possible."
~ Voyager at 30: Looking Beyond and Within -- "A mission that was supposed to last just five years is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall. Scientists continue to receive data from the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they approach interstellar space."
~ Killer Asteroid Traced in Space -- "The space rock that likely doomed the dinos is traced to an ancient smashup."
~ Networks create 'instant world telescope' -- "For the first time, a CSIRO radio telescope has been linked to others in China and Europe in real-time, demonstrating the power of high-speed global networks and effectively creating a telescope almost as big as the Earth."
~ Why Grizzly Bears Rub Trees -- "Odd grizzly bear tree rubbing way of marking scent, communicating."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Body watching and remembering -- "In the form of bodywork I am doing, they say watch with the body, and allow the body to remember."
~ Why Trust Comes First -- "By and large, we are chickens. If we had it our way, we’d prefer to know what to do before we start doing it. Thank goodness, then, that life’s lessons show us what we need to learn, despite our preferences."
~ The Universal Religion Part 2: The limits of universalism -- "Religion of course can be very divisive. As Richard Dawkins says it can inspire people to murder others because they have a barely distinguishable belief system. I don't agree with Dawkins that religion itself is a primary cause of violence, it is simply one more label by which we define tribal in-groups and out-groups - any ideology or physical difference will do just as well. In religion, emphasising commonality can bring people together, while emphasising difference has a danger of increasing hostility. On the other hand, by lumping everything together and glibly saying that it is all the same, we can muddy the water and distort the meaning of religions. And even if we can help bring religions together we do so at the risk of defining an in-group of religious people and an out-group of non-religions people."
~ The World Without Us -- "Alan Weisman's The World Without Us is a book-long exercise in "what if..." Specifically, it asks, and answers, what if the human species immediately and completely vanished from the Earth, today. The answer he provides is neither tedious nor depressing, in part because Weisman infuses the book with a ton of interesting, even astonishing information, and in part because he keeps changing the setting of the future scenario to show that the answer is not at all simple."
~ An important job for anyone we look up to: be flawed -- "Whenever we look up to someone, a few different things may be going on. One is projections of qualities alive in our awareness which don’t fit into our identity, so must be happening with someone else. Another person may be more awake, more clear, more insightful, have an open heart, and more, and whenever I see that in someone else, it means it is also right here, although not noticed much yet."
~ Buddhism-informed versus Buddhist-inspired blogging -- "Although I do not recall articulating it before, I have increasingly been interested in blogging that had more to do with the spirit of Buddhism than with the language or topics commonly associated with Buddhism (at least in the West). That is, if I come across something from a Christian or Sufi or what have you that produces an inspiration or revelation or other reaction affirming or enlivening the spiritual insights that Buddhism (as well as other faiths) encourages, such as an expansiveness of the heart and the virtues that accompany such a change, I would rather read that than another account of rediscovering the myriad levels of subtle interplay between Buddhist concepts and the profound philosophical implications that come from such reflection."
~ My Life , My Practice: Reflections of a Contemporary Yogi -- "I have been teaching yoga since 1994, which is the same year that I first came across Ken Wilber’s work. My exploration of both understanding his evolving model and developing my own ILP has been interwoven with my approach to teaching and my one-on-one bodywork/counseling sessions. But let's begin at the beginning."
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Today's Daily Om is a good reminder that the law of karma operates even when we are not aware of it.

The Consequences You Sow
Action And Effect

All motive and action affects the cosmos in some way. The principle of cause and effect is the truth that allows us to change ourselves and the world around us for the better. However, this same universal law is also at work when change is not at the forefront of our minds. Our intentions flow forever outward in the form of energy, affecting both the people closest to us and billions of individuals we will likely never meet. For this reason, we should strive always to speak, think, and behave with great thoughtfulness and compassion. The virtues we choose to embody can inspire joy and integrity in the lives of countless people, whether we touch their existence directly or not.

The influence we wield is infinite. In an effort to internalize our conscious understanding of the nature of cause and effect, we can never truly know how our thoughts, emotions, words, or actions will manifest themselves on the larger universal stage because it is likely that the furthest-reaching effects will fall outside the range of our perception. We can only look to the guidance of our conscience, which will help us determine whether each of our choices is contributing to humanity's illumination or setting the stage for unintended troubles. When we are in doubt, we need only remember that the cultivation of altruism inevitably leads to a harvest of goodwill and grace. Motivated by a sincere desire to spread goodness, we will be naturally drawn to those choices that will help us express our commitment to universal well-being.

Nothing you do, however minor or mundane, is ever exempt from the rules of cause and effect. From the moment of your birth, you have served as an agent of change, setting forces beyond your comprehension into motion across the surface of the earth and beyond. You can exert conscious control over this transformative energy simply by examining your intentions and endeavoring always to promote peace, positive energy, and passion in your ideas and actions. While you may never fully comprehend the extent of your purposefully heartfelt influence, you can rest assured that it will be universally felt.

Some things I am grateful for today:

1) A good hard rain this afternoon. Looks like the monsoon isn't quite done with Tucson.

2) A good workout -- again.

3) One of my clients was in the paper today (not for anything having to do with me, just for his work as a mentor to younger pilots):

Flying eases First Magnus pain

Ex-exec uses flight skills to mentor pilots

By Jeff Commings

Arizona Daily Star

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.05.2007

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Since losing his job as senior vice president at First Magnus Financial Corp., Faisal Adil can often be found in a hangar with his small plane at Tucson International Airport, sometimes taking to the skies as a way to alleviate the stress of being unemployed.

"I've been out there every day," said Adil, one of the company's first 12 employees. "It's a good stress-reliever."

Adil, 37, has been a pilot since 1999. He's flown his Beechcraft Bonanza S-35 as far as the East Coast and across the border to Mexico.

His interest in aviation has segued into a stint as a mentor for future pilots in Tucson, an endeavor that recently earned him a $1,000 prize from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association as part of its Project Pilot program.

The award recognized his work with five people in the past year who have received their pilot's licenses or will get them soon. Two of those pilots are his father and his wife. The other three were former co-workers at First Magnus.

"He was a resource when I had questions," said one of Adil's students, Phil Shoemaker, who earned his pilot's license Aug. 25.

It was Adil's father, Junaid, who helped foster his interest in planes as a youngster in Dubai, where Faisal lived until he went to the University of Texas-Austin to earn a degree in business in 1987.

"There was a small airport, and planes flew really close to the ground," Faisal Adil said. "I remember lying in the sand dunes with my father and watching these jets coming overhead. I must have been 4 or 5 years old."

Becoming a pilot is not as easy in Dubai as it is in the United States, Adil said, so he put away his dream and earned bachelor's and master's degrees before coming to Tucson in 1995.

In 1999, he got his pilot's license and he's logged about 1,500 hours since then. It wasn't until 2006 that he became a mentor to his first pilot-to-be: his father.

"He's always wanted to go up and fly," Adil said of his father, who earned his license in April and was flying over Tucson as his son spoke of him last week. "He bought an airplane and I signed up to be his mentor."

Adil has been a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which advocates for pilots' rights, since he got his license, and registered as a mentor in its Project Pilot program. Potential pilots are connected with licensed pilots for guidance outside the lessons they learn from their official instructors, Adil said. The program started in 1994 and was revamped in 2006 with updated resources.

The program's Web site lists nearly 20 pilot mentors in Southern Arizona.

Adil said his work as a pilot mentor is "unstructured." There are no set meeting times, study sessions or flying requirements. But the meetings he has with his students — which can include a quick plane flight or discussions about an upcoming test — remind Adil of his time learning about aviation.

"It's nice to see people that you are working with grasp concepts for the first time," he said. "It's brand-new for me again."

Shoemaker, 28, said Adil's most important contributions have been getting him acquainted with real-world applications, such as knowing the inner workings of hangars and how to shop for a private airplane.

"That's where he helped a lot," said Shoemaker, who has been flying in his Piper Archer more regularly since First Magnus dissolved.

Though Adil enjoys sharing his expertise as a mentor, it's not a moneymaker. He's exploring options in aviation as a second career. He owns a plot of land near the airport and is thinking of starting a business that caters to private pilots.

"I don't mind hanging out at the airport," he said. "I've come to know all the people there very well."

What are you grateful for today?

Slate published this piece a week or so ago on how to read John Ashbery, the first MTVu poet laureate. It's a pretty good article on how to read a poet considered by many to be the best living American poet, and by others to be a complete waste of paper.

Here is a good passage:

Ashbery's most famous rhetorical ambiguities—the odd, nonsensical language, the ever-shifting array of pronouns, the abrupt shifts in diction—are not totally without a center. He considers his poems to be, like Jasper Johns' paintings, a kind of "organized chaos." Imagine the poems as a series of different self-revising, self-interrupting voices—the different voices we use to talk to ourselves in our own minds (incantatory, exhortatory, scolding, disgusted, delighted, genial, nonsensical) that belong to the different characters we carry around in our own heads. Notice, too, that Ashbery frequently substitutes an unexpected word for a familiar one—"the bee's hymn," say, rather than "the bee's hum." Ashbery, who cut his teeth on the surrealists and the Dadaist poets—Tristan Tzara, Guillaume Apollinaire—as well as Elizabeth Bishop and Wallace Stevens, is trying to renovate a language that to him seems exhausted and cliché-riddled.

Read the whole article.

Just for fun, here is one of Ashbery's most widely debated and most difficult poems:

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand
Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer
And swerving easily away, as though to protect
What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams,
Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together
In a movement supporting the face, which swims
Toward and away like the hand
Except that it is in repose. It is what is
Sequestered. Vasari says, "Francesco one day set himself
To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose
In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . .
He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made
By a turner, and having divided it in half and
Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself
With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass,"
Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection, of which the portrait
Is the reflection once removed.
The glass chose to reflect only what he saw
Which was enough for his purpose: his image
Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle.
The time of day or the density of the light
Adhering to the face keeps it
Lively and intact in a recurring wave
Of arrival. The soul establishes itself.
But how far can it swim out through the eyes
And still return safely to its nest? The surface
Of the mirror being convex, the distance increases
Significantly; that is, enough to make the point
That the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept
In suspension, unable to advance much farther
Than your look as it intercepts the picture.
Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied"
By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission
That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is,
Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,
The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,
Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay
Posing in this place. It must move
As little as possible. This is what the portrait says.
But there is in that gaze a combination
Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful
In its restraint that one cannot look for long.
The secret is too plain. The pity of it smarts,
Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul,
Has no secret, is small, and it fits
Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
That is the tune but there are no words.
The words are only speculation
(From the Latin speculum, mirror):
They seek and cannot find the meaning of the music.
We see only postures of the dream,
Riders of the motion that swings the face
Into view under evening skies, with no
False disarray as proof of authenticity.
But it is life englobed.
One would like to stick one's hand
Out of the globe, but its dimension,
What carries it, will not allow it.
No doubt it is this, not the reflex
To hide something, which makes the hand loom large
As it retreats slightly. There is no way
To build it flat like a section of wall:
It must join the segment of a circle,
Roving back to the body of which it seems
So unlikely a part, to fence in and shore up the face
On which the effort of this condition reads
Like a pinpoint of a smile, a spark
Or star one is not sure of having seen
As darkness resumes. A perverse light whose
Imperative of subtlety dooms in advance its
Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant.
Francesco, your hand is big enough
To wreck the sphere, and too big,
One would think, to weave delicate meshes
That only argue its further detention.
(Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale,
Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom
In relation to the tiny, self-important ship
On the surface.) But your eyes proclaim
That everything is surface. The surface is what's there
And nothing can exist except what's there.
There are no recesses in the room, only alcoves,
And the window doesn't matter much, or that
Sliver of window or mirror on the right, even
As a gauge of the weather, which in French is
Le temps, the word for time, and which
Follows a course wherein changes are merely
Features of the whole. The whole is stable within
Instability, a globe like ours, resting
On a pedestal of vacuum, a ping-pong ball
Secure on its jet of water.
And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
You will stay on, restive, serene in
Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning
But which holds something of both in pure
Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.

The balloon pops, the attention
Turns dully away. Clouds
In the puddle stir up into sawtoothed fragments.
I think of the friends
Who came to see me, of what yesterday
Was like. A peculiar slant
Of memory that intrudes on the dreaming model
In the silence of the studio as he considers
Lifting the pencil to the self-portrait.
How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand,
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you. Those voices in the dusk
Have told you all and still the tale goes on
In the form of memories deposited in irregular
Clumps of crystals. Whose curved hand controls,
Francesco, the turning seasons and the thoughts
That peel off and fly away at breathless speeds
Like the last stubborn leaves ripped
From wet branches? I see in this only the chaos
Of your round mirror which organizes everything
Around the polestar of your eyes which are empty,
Know nothing, dream but reveal nothing.
I feel the carousel starting slowly
And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the straight way out,
The distance between us. Long ago
The strewn evidence meant something,
The small accidents and pleasures
Of the day as it moved gracelessly on,
A housewife doing chores. Impossible now
To restore those properties in the silver blur that is
The record of what you accomplished by sitting down
"With great art to copy all that you saw in the glass"
So as to perfect and rule out the extraneous
Forever. In the circle of your intentions certain spars
Remain that perpetuate the enchantment of self with self:
Eyebeams, muslin, coral. It doesn't matter
Because these are things as they are today
Before one's shadow ever grew
Out of the field into thoughts of tomorrow.

Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted,
Desolate, reluctant as any landscape
To yield what are laws of perspective
After all only to the painter's deep
Mistrust, a weak instrument though
Necessary. Of course some things
Are possible, it knows, but it doesn't know
Which ones. Some day we will try
To do as many things as are possible
And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful
Of them, but this will not have anything
To do with what is promised today, our
Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear
On the horizon. Today enough of a cover burnishes
To keep the supposition of promises together
In one piece of surface, letting one ramble
Back home from them so that these
Even stronger possibilities can remain
Whole without being tested. Actually
The skin of the bubble-chamber's as tough as
Reptile eggs; everything gets "programmed" there
In due course: more keeps getting included
Without adding to the sum, and just as one
Gets accustomed to a noise that
Kept one awake but now no longer does,
So the room contains this flow like an hourglass
Without varying in climate or quality
(Except perhaps to brighten bleakly and almost
Invisibly, in a focus sharpening toward death--more
Of this later). What should be the vacuum of a dream
Becomes continually replete as the source of dreams
Is being tapped so that this one dream
May wax, flourish like a cabbage rose,
Defying sumptuary laws, leaving us
To awake and try to begin living in what
Has now become a slum. Sydney Freedberg in his
Parmigianino says of it: "Realism in this portrait
No longer produces and objective truth, but a bizarria . . . .
However its distortion does not create
A feeling of disharmony . . . . The forms retain
A strong measure of ideal beauty," because
Fed by our dreams, so inconsequential until one day
We notice the hole they left. Now their importance
If not their meaning is plain. They were to nourish
A dream which includes them all, as they are
Finally reversed in the accumulating mirror.
They seemed strange because we couldn't actually see them.
And we realize this only at a point where they lapse
Like a wave breaking on a rock, giving up
Its shape in a gesture which expresses that shape.
The forms retain a strong measure of ideal beauty
As they forage in secret on our idea of distortion.
Why be unhappy with this arrangement, since
Dreams prolong us as they are absorbed?
Something like living occurs, a movement
Out of the dream into its codification.

As I start to forget it
It presents its stereotype again
But it is an unfamiliar stereotype, the face
Riding at anchor, issued from hazards, soon
To accost others, "rather angel than man" (Vasari).
Perhaps an angel looks like everything
We have forgotten, I mean forgotten
Things that don't seem familiar when
We meet them again, lost beyond telling,
Which were ours once. This would be the point
Of invading the privacy of this man who
"Dabbled in alchemy, but whose wish
Here was not to examine the subtleties of art
In a detached, scientific spirit: he wished through them
To impart the sense of novelty and amazement to the spectator"
(Freedberg). Later portraits such as the Uffizi
"Gentleman," the Borghese "Young Prelate" and
The Naples "Antea" issue from Mannerist
Tensions, but here, as Freedberg points out,
The surprise, the tension are in the concept
Rather than its realization.
The consonance of the High Renaissance
Is present, though distorted by the mirror.
What is novel is the extreme care in rendering
The velleities of the rounded reflecting surface
(It is the first mirror portrait),
So that you could be fooled for a moment
Before you realize the reflection
Isn't yours. You feel then like one of those
Hoffmann characters who have been deprived
Of a reflection, except that the whole of me
Is seen to be supplanted by the strict
Otherness of the painter in his
Other room. We have surprised him
At work, but no, he has surprised us
As he works. The picture is almost finished,
The surprise almost over, as when one looks out,
Startled by a snowfall which even now is
Ending in specks and sparkles of snow.
It happened while you were inside, asleep,
And there is no reason why you should have
Been awake for it, except that the day
Is ending and it will be hard for you
To get to sleep tonight, at least until late.

The shadow of the city injects its own
Urgency: Rome where Francesco
Was at work during the Sack: his inventions
Amazed the soldiers who burst in on him;
They decided to spare his life, but he left soon after;
Vienna where the painting is today, where
I saw it with Pierre in the summer of 1959; New York
Where I am now, which is a logarithm
Of other cities. Our landscape
Is alive with filiations, shuttlings;
Business is carried on by look, gesture,
Hearsay. It is another life to the city,
The backing of the looking glass of the
Unidentified but precisely sketched studio. It wants
To siphon off the life of the studio, deflate
Its mapped space to enactments, island it.
That operation has been temporarily stalled
But something new is on the way, a new preciosity
In the wind. Can you stand it,
Francesco? Are you strong enough for it?
This wind brings what it knows not, is
Self--propelled, blind, has no notion
Of itself. It is inertia that once
Acknowledged saps all activity, secret or public:
Whispers of the word that can't be understood
But can be felt, a chill, a blight
Moving outward along the capes and peninsulas
Of your nervures and so to the archipelagoes
And to the bathed, aired secrecy of the open sea.
This is its negative side. Its positive side is
Making you notice life and the stresses
That only seemed to go away, but now,
As this new mode questions, are seen to be
Hastening out of style. If they are to become classics
They must decide which side they are on.
Their reticence has undermined
The urban scenery, made its ambiguities
Look willful and tired, the games of an old man.
What we need now is this unlikely
Challenger pounding on the gates of an amazed
Castle. Your argument, Francesco,
Had begun to grow stale as no answer
Or answers were forthcoming. If it dissolves now
Into dust, that only means its time had come
Some time ago, but look now, and listen:
It may be that another life is stocked there
In recesses no one knew of; that it,
Not we, are the change; that we are in fact it
If we could get back to it, relive some of the way
It looked, turn our faces to the globe as it sets
And still be coming out all right:
Nerves normal, breath normal. Since it is a metaphor
Made to include us, we are a part of it and
Can live in it as in fact we have done,
Only leaving our minds bare for questioning
We now see will not take place at random
But in an orderly way that means to menace
Nobody--the normal way things are done,
Like the concentric growing up of days
Around a life: correctly, if you think about it.

A breeze like the turning of a page
Brings back your face: the moment
Takes such a big bite out of the haze
Of pleasant intuition it comes after.
The locking into place is "death itself,"
As Berg said of a phrase in Mahler's Ninth;
Or, to quote Imogen in Cymbeline, "There cannot
Be a pinch in death more sharp than this," for,
Though only exercise or tactic, it carries
The momentum of a conviction that had been building.
Mere forgetfulness cannot remove it
Nor wishing bring it back, as long as it remains
The white precipitate of its dream
In the climate of sighs flung across our world,
A cloth over a birdcage. But it is certain that
What is beautiful seems so only in relation to a specific
Life, experienced or not, channeled into some form
Steeped in the nostalgia of a collective past.
The light sinks today with an enthusiasm
I have known elsewhere, and known why
It seemed meaningful, that others felt this way
Years ago. I go on consulting
This mirror that is no longer mine
For as much brisk vacancy as is to be
My portion this time. And the vase is always full
Because there is only just so much room
And it accommodates everything. The sample
One sees is not to be taken as
Merely that, but as everything as it
May be imagined outside time--not as a gesture
But as all, in the refined, assimilable state.
But what is this universe the porch of
As it veers in and out, back and forth,
Refusing to surround us and still the only
Thing we can see? Love once
Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,
Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.
But we know it cannot be sandwiched
Between two adjacent moments, that its windings
Lead nowhere except to further tributaries
And that these empty themselves into a vague
Sense of something that can never be known
Even though it seems likely that each of us
Knows what it is and is capable of
Communicating it to the other. But the look
Some wear as a sign makes one want to
Push forward ignoring the apparent
NaÏveté of the attempt, not caring
That no one is listening, since the light
Has been lit once and for all in their eyes
And is present, unimpaired, a permanent anomaly,
Awake and silent. On the surface of it
There seems no special reason why that light
Should be focused by love, or why
The city falling with its beautiful suburbs
Into space always less clear, less defined,
Should read as the support of its progress,
The easel upon which the drama unfolded
To its own satisfaction and to the end
Of our dreaming, as we had never imagined
It would end, in worn daylight with the painted
Promise showing through as a gage, a bond.
This nondescript, never-to-be defined daytime is
The secret of where it takes place
And we can no longer return to the various
Conflicting statements gathered, lapses of memory
Of the principal witnesses. All we know
Is that we are a little early, that
Today has that special, lapidary
Todayness that the sunlight reproduces
Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe
Sidewalks. No previous day would have been like this.
I used to think they were all alike,
That the present always looked the same to everybody
But this confusion drains away as one
Is always cresting into one's present.
Yet the "poetic," straw-colored space
Of the long corridor that leads back to the painting,
Its darkening opposite--is this
Some figment of "art," not to be imagined
As real, let alone special? Hasn't it too its lair
In the present we are always escaping from
And falling back into, as the waterwheel of days
Pursues its uneventful, even serene course?
I think it is trying to say it is today
And we must get out of it even as the public
Is pushing through the museum now so as to
Be out by closing time. You can't live there.
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how:
Secrets of wash and finish that took a lifetime
To learn and are reduced to the status of
Black-and-white illustrations in a book where colorplates
Are rare. That is, all time
Reduces to no special time. No one
Alludes to the change; to do so might
Involve calling attention to oneself
Which would augment the dread of not getting out
Before having seen the whole collection
(Except for the sculptures in the basement:
They are where they belong).
Our time gets to be veiled, compromised
By the portrait's will to endure. It hints at
Our own, which we were hoping to keep hidden.
We don't need paintings or
Doggerel written by mature poets when
The explosion is so precise, so fine.
Is there any point even in acknowledging
The existence of all that? Does it
Exist? Certainly the leisure to
Indulge stately pastimes doesn't,
Any more. Today has no margins, the event arrives
Flush with its edges, is of the same substance,
Indistinguishable. "Play" is something else;
It exists, in a society specifically
Organized as a demonstration of itself.
There is no other way, and those assholes
Who would confuse everything with their mirror games
Which seem to multiply stakes and possibilities, or
At least confuse issues by means of an investing
Aura that would corrode the architecture
Of the whole in a haze of suppressed mockery,
Are beside the point. They are out of the game,
Which doesn't exist until they are out of it.
It seems like a very hostile universe
But as the principle of each individual thing is
Hostile to, exists at the expense of all the others
As philosophers have often pointed out, at least
This thing, the mute, undivided present,
Has the justification of logic, which
In this instance isn't a bad thing
Or wouldn't be, if the way of telling
Didn't somehow intrude, twisting the end result
Into a caricature of itself. This always
Happens, as in the game where
A whispered phrase passed around the room
Ends up as something completely different.
It is the principle that makes works of art so unlike
What the artist intended. Often he finds
He has omitted the thing he started out to say
In the first place. Seduced by flowers,
Explicit pleasures, he blames himself (though
Secretly satisfied with the result), imagining
He had a say in the matter and exercised
An option of which he was hardly conscious,
Unaware that necessity circumvents such resolutions.
So as to create something new
For itself, that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being. Parmigianino
Must have realized this as he worked at his
Life-obstructing task. One is forced to read
The perfectly plausible accomplishment of a purpose
Into the smooth, perhaps even bland (but so
Enigmatic) finish. Is there anything
To be serious about beyond this otherness
That gets included in the most ordinary
Forms of daily activity, changing everything
Slightly and profoundly, and tearing the matter
Of creation, any creation, not just artistic creation
Out of our hands, to install it on some monstrous, near
Peak, too close to ignore, too far
For one to intervene? This otherness, this
"Not-being-us" is all there is to look at
In the mirror, though no one can say
How it came to be this way. A ship
Flying unknown colors has entered the harbor.
You are allowing extraneous matters
To break up your day, cloud the focus
Of the crystal ball. Its scene drifts away
Like vapor scattered on the wind. The fertile
Thought-associations that until now came
So easily, appear no more, or rarely. Their
Colorings are less intense, washed out
By autumn rains and winds, spoiled, muddied,
Given back to you because they are worthless.
Yet we are such creatures of habit that their
Implications are still around en permanence, confusing
Issues. To be serious only about sex
Is perhaps one way, but the sands are hissing
As they approach the beginning of the big slide
Into what happened. This past
Is now here: the painter's
Reflected face, in which we linger, receiving
Dreams and inspirations on an unassigned
Frequency, but the hues have turned metallic,
The curves and edges are not so rich. Each person
Has one big theory to explain the universe
But it doesn't tell the whole story
And in the end it is what is outside him
That matters, to him and especially to us
Who have been given no help whatever
In decoding our own man-size quotient and must rely
On second-hand knowledge. Yet I know
That no one else's taste is going to be
Any help, and might as well be ignored.
Once it seemed so perfect--gloss on the fine
Freckled skin, lips moistened as though about to part
Releasing speech, and the familiar look
Of clothes and furniture that one forgets.
This could have been our paradise: exotic
Refuge within an exhausted world, but that wasn't
In the cards, because it couldn't have been
The point. Aping naturalness may be the first step
Toward achieving an inner calm
But it is the first step only, and often
Remains a frozen gesture of welcome etched
On the air materializing behind it,
A convention. And we have really
No time for these, except to use them
For kindling. The sooner they are burnt up
The better for the roles we have to play.
Therefore I beseech you, withdraw that hand,
Offer it no longer as shield or greeting,
The shield of a greeting, Francesco:
There is room for one bullet in the chamber:
Our looking through the wrong end
Of the telescope as you fall back at a speed
Faster than that of light to flatten ultimately
Among the features of the room, an invitation
Never mailed, the "it was all a dream"
Syndrome, though the "all" tells tersely
Enough how it wasn't. Its existence
Was real, though troubled, and the ache
Of this waking dream can never drown out
The diagram still sketched on the wind,
Chosen, meant for me and materialized
In the disguising radiance of my room.
We have seen the city; it is the gibbous
Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen
On its balcony and are resumed within,
But the action is the cold, syrupy flow
Of a pageant. One feels too confined,
Sifting the April sunlight for clues,
In the mere stillness of the ease of its
Parameter. The hand holds no chalk
And each part of the whole falls off
And cannot know it knew, except
Here and there, in cold pockets
Of remembrance, whispers out of time.

Today's Daily Om reminds us that life never gives us more than we can handle, but we know, deeply, that we can handle it -- and honor our fear and doubts at the same time.

Below The Surface
Finding Deep Strength

We have all faced moments in our lives when the pressure mounts beyond what we feel we can handle, and we find ourselves thinking that we do not have the strength to carry on. Sometimes we have just gotten through a major obstacle or illness only to find another one waiting for us the moment we finally catch our breath. Sometimes we endure one loss after another, wondering when we will get a break from life’s travails. It does not seem fair or right that life should demand more of us when we feel we have given all we can, but sometimes this is the way life works.

When we look back on our lives, we see that we have survived many trials and surmounted many obstacles, often to our own amazement. In each of those instances, we had to break through our ideas about how much we can handle and go deeper into our hidden reserves. The thought that we do not have the strength to handle what is before us can be likened to the hard surface of a frozen lake. It appears to be an impenetrable fact, but when we break through it, we find that a deep well of energy and inspiration was trapped beneath that icy barrier the whole time. Sometimes we break through by cutting a hole into our resistance with our willpower, and sometimes we melt the ice with compassion for our predicament and ourselves. Either way, each time we break through, we reach a new understanding of the strength we store within ourselves.

When we find ourselves up against that frozen barrier of thinking we cannot handle our situation, we may find that the kindest choice is to love ourselves and our resistance too. We can simply accept that we are overwhelmed, exhausted, and stretched, and we can offer ourselves loving kindness and compassion. If we can extend to ourselves the unconditional warmth of a mother’s love, before we know it, the ice will begin to break.

Quote of the day:

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
~ Sir Francis Bacon

Image of the day (John Craig):



BODY
~ Compound versus isolation lifts -- "Generally all weight lifting exercises can be categorized into two major types of movements; compound and isolation. Both offer different types of benefits and drawbacks and the decision of which to include in your program is largely going to be based upon your individual goals."
~ Setting calorie guidelines -- "If you are serious about fitness, nutrition and your workouts, you likely already know the importance of eating a proper diet. The cornerstone of your diet is going to be the calorie level you are eating at. It is critical that you determine the proper amount of calories that you should be taking in as this is going to be the single most important factor that determines whether you gain, lose or maintain your weight." These are general guidelines, but useful.
~ The Strong and Ripped Program -- "What's the Goal of this Program? To kick your ass, but you'll probably shed some fat and get a little stronger, too. All you'll need are a stop watch, one die (stolen from a parcheesi game), and easy access to a puke bucket."
~ Exercise of the Week: The Lumberjack Squat -- "The "lumberjack squat" isn't what people in the logging industry head off to do behind a large poplar tree after having a hearty breakfast of bran flakes. Instead, it's a helluva' cool squatting movement that doesn't compress the spine."
~ Yoga Is More Than Just Showing Up, but That Does Help -- "Enlightenment by the numbers, as in the numbers 30 days for $30."
~ Exercise And Yoga Can Improve Quality Of Life And Physical Fitness In Women With Early-Stage Breast Cancer -- "Two studies report that exercise and yoga can help maintain and in some cases improve quality of life in women with early-stage breast cancer. The first study found that resistance and aerobic exercise improved physical fitness, self-esteem and body composition, and that resistance exercise improved chemotherapy completion rates. The second study demonstrated that yoga was particularly beneficial for women who were not receiving chemotherapy during the study period."
~ Popcorn May Cause Lung Disease -- "An ingredient in microwave popcorn may cause potentially deadly lung problems."
~ Alzheimers, Dementia and Fats -- "Our brains and our whole bodies demand essential fatty acids for repair and normal functioning. Alzheimer's and dementia are a concern for every aging American."
~ How To Enhance Muscle Function -- "Skeletal muscle is composed of two types of muscle fiber, slow and fast, which have different capabilities -- slow fibers do not tire easily and are high endurance, whereas fast fibers tire easily and are low endurance. The relative amount of each fiber type is determined by muscle usage -- exercise training causes fast fibers to become slow fibers, whereas inactivity that results in muscle atrophy (for example inactivity induced by spinal cord injury and unloading caused by space flight or tail suspension) causes slow fibers to become fast fibers."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ CDC: Suicide Rate Among U.S. Girls Soars -- "The suicide rate among preteen and young teen girls spiked 76 percent, a disturbing sign that federal health officials say they can't fully explain...." This is disturbing.
~ New insights into OCD -- "Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common debilitating psychiatric disorder, yet the cause of OCD is unknown and few effective treatments are available. A recent study of mutant mice reveals a novel mechanism leading to OCD-like behaviors in mice and suggests potential new therapeutic strategies."
~ Higher social skills are uniquely human -- "A new study published today in Science reports that humans have distinctive social skills. Esther Herrmann, lead author of the study, answers Scitizen’s questions. Apes bite and try to break a tube to retrieve the food inside while children follow the experimenter’s example to get inside the tube to retrieve the prize...."
~ Faster Antidepressant Shows Promise -- "SSRIs work by preventing the brain from clearing away serotonin that has already been used, allowing excess neurotransmitters to build up and generate a signal multiple times. Dr. Guillaume Lucas has just tested a new drug that, while still focusing on serotonin, acts directly on receptors instead of slowly building up existing neurotransmitters."
~ Overcoming Jealousy -- "Overcoming jealousy has been one of my most requested topics for new articles, but in the past I’ve always declined such requests because I don’t have much personal experience in this area. I’m not prone to jealousy, so I can’t explain from personal experience how to overcome it. Nevertheless, due to the demand for such an article, I’ll risk sharing my thoughts on it anyway."
~ Design Your Life: What Would You Do If You Had Nothing To Do? -- "Let’s say you had a blank day staring at you. You didn’t have to work. You could do anything at all (although money is still a limiting factor). What would your perfect day be like?"
~ Urge Surfing to beat addictions and cravings -- "A technique known as "urge surfing" which harnesses mindfulness can be helpful for people who are experiencing cravings. Originally developed as a tool to help people struggling to battle alcohol and drug addiction, urge surfing is now being used to help people with overeating, gambling, compulsive shopping, smoking and other compulsive urges." This sounds similar to the 5-minute rule I use with compulsive eating clients -- wait five minutes when the urge hits and see if it recedes.


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Bible Belter -- Richard Dawkins -- "If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words, beautifully spoken in that formidable Richard Burton voice (the whole performance not dulled by other equally formidable Richard Burton habits), would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy."
~ The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME -- From Time, their picks for the best TV ever.
~ Can the Oprah Effect Make Obama President? -- "A plug from Winfrey can turn a book into a best-seller and a movie into a blockbuster. But does the Oprah effect hold true for politics too? Can Winfrey's blessing turn a candidate into a president?"
~ Antigay 'Rally' Begets Ridiculous Rhetoric; Surprises No One -- "A two-person antigay protest at the University of Iowa turned bizarre after the two men reportedly blamed the September 11 attacks on homosexuals and said the tornado that struck Iowa City in spring 2006 were caused by abortion clinics in the town, according to the Daily Iowan." This would be funny if it weren't so sad.
~ GOP Debate Seemed Removed From Economic Reality -- "How could the Republican candidates not mention the housing crisis or the rising risk of recession?"
~ Starr: Can Anyone Beat the NFL's Big 3? -- "Though the league is defined by parity and Super Bowl surprises, all the smart guys are fixated on the same three teams. Me too."
~ Fineman: Notes on New Hampshire -- "The wooing of McCain continued. Giuliani impressed Romney’s people as well-prepared. And Huckabee won the Ron Paul lightning round. A rundown of the first fall GOP debate."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ 10 Future Web Trends -- "We're well into the current era of the Web, commonly referred to as Web 2.0. Features of this phase of the Web include search, social networks, online media (music, video, etc), content aggregation and syndication (RSS), mashups (APIs), and much more. Currently the Web is still mostly accessed via a PC, but we're starting to see more Web excitement from mobile devices (e.g. iPhone) and television sets (e.g. XBox Live 360). What then can we expect from the next 10 or so years on the Web?"
~ Jungle Germs: Playgrounds Sicken Kids -- "Tests across the nation showed just how germy playgrounds really are."
~ Which is better, the iPhone or the BlackBerry? -- "On Wednesday, Apple cut the price of its top-of-the-line iPhone from a wallet-breaking $599 to a less-terrifying $399. This price reduction comes as reports have emerged that July sales of the iPhone outnumbered those of all other smartphones combined. With my battered, aging BlackBerry on its last legs, I went back to the Apple store to try to join the crowd and sell myself on trading brands. But after a few hours of side-by-side comparisons, I'm convinced more than ever that the iPhone isn't the device for me. I'll be replacing my BlackBerry with ... another BlackBerry."
~ Environmental Myths -- "Jerry Mander & John Cavanaugh | Don't believe the hype that "clean coal," "clean nuclear power" and biofuels will solve the environmental crisis."
~ Birch Trees To Edge Out Aspens In Warming World -- "Birches will likely drive out many aspens in northern forests as mounting levels of carbon dioxide force the trees to compete more fiercely for soil nutrients in the coming decades, according to a recent article. Carbon dioxide is emitted when fossil fuels are burned, and it's a heat-trapping gas blamed for global warming. But rising carbon dioxide levels also have a fertilizing effect on trees and other plants, making them grow faster than they normally would."
~ Physicists Establish 'Spooky' Quantum Communication -- "Physicists have coaxed two separate atoms to communicate with a sort of quantum intuition that Albert Einstein called "spooky." In doing so, the researchers have made an advance toward super-fast quantum computing. The research could also be a building block for a quantum internet."
~ Change from Arid to Wet Climate in Africa Altered Early Human Evolution -- "A drastic change in the climate of tropical Africa may have significantly driven early human evolution, an international team of scientists has found."
~ Possible Culprit Found in Bee Die-Off -- "The Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus may be behind the mysterious honey bee die-off."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Eighteen Ways to Invest in Life -- "Do you invest your money? Putting away a portion of your income into an investment plan creates more money later. With interest rates and financial pundits it is easy to see why financial investment makes sense. But what about investment in other areas? Do you invest in your time, brain, body or space? What about investments in the books you read and friends you meet? Although few areas of life have the precision of an investment account, applying investment principles to other situations can have incredible gains."
~ Mother Theresa Again Again: Promise Last Time -- "She saw Jesus everywhere, in everyone in the world but never inside herself. Just as Jesus on the Cross felt God everywhere but in his own suffering (My God, My God why have you abandoned ME....not them)."
~ The Nazi Occult Conspiracy -- "I've always been intrigued with the Nazi occult conspiracy. It's the stuff of legends and Hollywood movies. Remember Raiders of the Lost Ark? Cool movie."
~ Conference on After Postmodernism -- "The Conference posed a specific question: If we absorb postmodernism, if we recognize the variety and ungroundedness of grounds, but do not want to stop in arbitrariness, relativism, or aphoria, what comes after postmodernism?"
~ Buddhist Monks Release Hostages -- "A group of Buddhist monks ended a tense standoff with authorities Thursday in Myanmar by releasing 20 government officials they had taken hostage." Who says Buddhists are always peaceful?
~ Confucius Joins Jesus on Court Display -- "Napoleon, Confucius, Hammurabi and more than a dozen other historical figures have joined Jesus Christ on the wall at courthouse in a bid to reassure visitors that the court wanted nothing more than to showcase people who helped to create the laws of civilized nations." Cool.
~ Some music reviews.... -- From Cory deVos at the Holons blog.
~ How Old is the Suttapitaka? -- "A very interesting article making a scholarly case for the antiquity of the canon; How Old is the Suttapitaka by Alexander Wynn. He makes the argument that the Pali Canon was closed to new material at a very early date. One of his key arguments is that stories and doctrines that are found in other recensions are relegated to the Pali commentaries." Links to the original article.
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Some things I am grateful for today:

1) Last night's rain lasted into this morning, which gave us a cool day (89 degrees) before it gets back to nearly 100 by the weekend.

2) Football. The NFL season began tonight. Woo Hoo!

3) I registered today for the annual IFS conference next month in Chicago (Elgin, actually). Among the many cool workshops I will attend is one on Awakening to Self: Integrating IFS with Big Mind/Big Heart Practice, and another one on Orders of Self: Transformation and Spiritual Development, which includes the work of Ken Wilber and Rogert Kegan (very cool!) -- and that's just the first day. This is going to be a VERY inspiring weekend.

What are you grateful for today?

From The Onion:

Historic Pretzels-For-Little Debbie Swap Sparks Heavy Lunchtime Trading

September 7, 2007 | Issue 43•36 BOULDER, CO—Lunchtime trading at the Franklin Elementary Snack Exchange was up 34 swaps at the closing recess bell Tuesday, an unprecedented frenzy of activity triggered by the trade of a Ziploc bag of Herr's Extra Thin Pretzels for a Little Debbie Fudge Brownie.

Snack market analysts say the windfall is reminiscent of the famed 1998 Mott's Apple Juice juice box for Hostess Fruit Pie exchange, in which a previously undervalued snack outperformed virtually all expectations. However, unlike yesterday's trade, the '98 deal had little cumulative effect on the market.

Speaking from the wrapper- littered trading floor, longtime Herr's snackholder Brian Genschen, 9, said that his deal with trader Jeff Fraser, 8, came close to collapsing.

"At first I only wanted to give him a handful of pretzels, but when he said 'no way,' I knew I had to sweeten the deal," said Genschen, who subsequently agreed to increase his initial offering price to the entire bag of pretzels. "Then he was like 'okay.'"

Genschen has of yet indicated no interest in an initial public offering of the fudge brownie, and said he expects Fraser to honor the terms of the deal.

"No trade backs," Genschen said.

Known for his astute snack-trading judgment, Genschen based his trade on simple observation. Noting that Fraser's lunches had contained the individually wrapped brownies for over a week, Genschen surmised that he "was probably sick of them by now."

Critics of Genschen, who claim that he actually obtained insider knowledge when he snooped in the Frasers' pantry during a recent sleepover and found six boxes of snack cakes, pelted him with grapes.

"That's totally so not fair—now everyone will want me to trade away all of my Swiss Cake Rolls," Tracy Cabanne, 9, said. Like many with extensive snack-cake holdings, Cabanne hoped that the sudden demand was only a temporary trend. Nevertheless, the fourth-grader appeared to support a diversification strategy to compensate for any potential losses, telling her mother after class to buy the Frito-Lay variety pack next time she was at the store.

Genschen said he felt he made the best trade of his elementary school career, despite being plagued by subsequent hostile takeover attempts on his brownie, which he deposited in his K-Swiss backpack. And while he took a notable loss on the pretzels, Genschen maintains that he has sufficient liquid assets in his 16-ounce strawberry Nesquik.

"Anybody want to trade something for grapes?" Genschen said. "They're still pretty good. I'll trade them for some of those blue chips."

The impending bell created turmoil as anxious traders attempted to avoid rapid devaluations by dumping their snacks. While some were able to make substantial gains, the activity resulted in a flood of Sun-Maid raisin boxes and an estimated 56 feet of Fruit by the Foot. However, school lunch experts cautioned that no matter what happens with smaller commodities, pizza will always remain the gold standard.

"I'm pretty excited with the way things are going—maybe I can finally get rid of these celery sticks," Kevin Griebe, 8, said. "My mom never packs good lunches."

Many are blaming the current trading atmosphere for today's irrational playground exuberance, which resulted in the tossing of a whole-grain bagel onto the roof of the school building. Yet others are quick to point out that the volatility is symptomatic of an economy still recovering from a gummi bear market.

Nationwide, the NASNAQ closed at 2,261, up 54 points from the previous lunch period. With spikes in trading volume, the potato chip lost ground to the pretzel, mutual Funyuns rose, and Cheese Nips continued to have a bite-sized share of the market.

Despite the more adventurous mood, trades with the Indian kid remained steady at zero, as his lunchtime commodities are generally deemed a totally gross domestic product.

Over at Voice of America's website, they have a Q&A with Deepak Chopra on his recent book, Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment.

The School Of Metaphysics

Executioner happy to explain
How his wristwatch works
As he shadows me on the street.
I call him that because he is grim and officious
And wears black.

The clock on the church tower
Had stopped at five to eleven.
The morning newspapers had no date.
The gray building on the corner
Could've been a state pen,

And then he showed up with his watch,
Whose Gothic numerals
And the absence of hands
He wanted me to understand
Right then and there.

Quote of the day:

"The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking."
~ A. A. Milne

Image of the day:


BODY
~ Mastering the pull up -- "Today’s “tip of the day” is how to properly do a pull up."
~ Get Tips on Getting Healthy in Fall -- "Dr. Madelyn Fernstrom gives you tips on how to stay healthy this fall."
~ Sugary Drinks, Not Fruit Juice, May Be Linked To Insulin Resistance -- "Steady increases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages over the last several decades, as well as rates of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, led nutritional epidemiologists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and colleagues to explore the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and insulin resistance, a precursor to Type 2 diabetes."
~ Mediterranean diet may ease arthritis pain -- "Learning how to eat Mediterranean-style may help people with rheumatoid arthritis improve their symptoms, a study suggests."
~ Cutting down on sleep 'a recipe for heart disease' -- "People who deprive themselves of sleep may be more likely to die of heart disease, researchers have found. A new study has identified a link between lack of sleep, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease."
~ 7 secretly healthy foods -- "Some foods get a bad rap as artery-clogging diet busters. These 7 items are better for you than you think." Moderation is the key on this topic.
~ Understanding Amino Acids and their Importance in Diet -- "The importance of protein in a healthy diet is well known to nutritional scientists, and widely understood by the general population. Indeed, every bodily system is directly or indirectly supported by protein. For example, protein supports the structural development of cells, helps ensure the integrity of tissue, aids digestion, carries hormones, and strengthens the immune system."
~ Tricks and Recipes for Make-Ahead Meals -- "Make-ahead meals put you in control of your schedule. Do the preparation when you have time, and your reward is a quick, tasty meal later on." This is one of my keys to eating healthy -- have your meals already prepared. That way, you have dinner waiting at home so you are not tempted to stop for fast food.
~ 14 Everyday Food Habits for Better Health -- "One of the more difficult habits for people to change seems to be what they eat. It’s also seems to be one of the most popular ones to try to change."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Depression Eclipses Other Chronic Disease for Poor Health Status -- "No individual chronic disease -- not angina, not arthritis, not asthma, not diabetes -- is more disabling than depression, according to a World Health Organization study."
~ Nail nibbler? Treatment may prevent biting -- "Do you find your fingers drifting into your mouth when you’re nervous, anxious or just bored? Are your nails chewed to splinters or your cuticles gnawed to bleeding pulp? A Dutch business claims its treatment cures nail nibblers."
~ Work stress found to promote obesity -- "Stress experienced at work significantly increases a person's risk of obesity in general and central obesity in particular, according to a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology."
~ Advice for Students: Taking Notes that Work -- "Note-taking is one of those skills that rarely gets taught. Teachers and professors assume either that taking good notes comes naturally or that someone else must have already taught students how to take notes. Then we sit around and complain that our students don’t know how to take notes."
~ 7 ways to use writing for healing -- "yesterday i talked about the book writing yourself home. as i mentioned, it uses excerpts from women’s writings – some well-known, some not – to illustrate how we can use writing and journaling as a way of healing and self-discovery."
~ Make a Gratitude Adjustment -- "Count your blessings for a mood boost."
~ Rat Race: Speed Freaks -- "Slow down, you move too fast."
~ Specific Brain Protein Required For Nerve Cell Connections To Form And Function -- "Neurons, or nerve cells, communicate with each other through contact points called synapses. When these connections are damaged, communication breaks down, causing the messages that would normally help our feet push our bike pedals or our mind locate our car keys to fall short. Now scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for these nerve cell connections to form and function correctly."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Thompson on the Issues -- "A look at where Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson stands on a sampling of issues, drawn from his 2008 campaign and his record as a Tennessee senator from 1994 to 2003."
~ Edge 221 —September 4, 2007 -- Lots of good stuff on culture.
~ In U.S., science is distorted to promote political and corporate agendas -- "In the United States today, science is no longer a pure study. The science primarily publicized today is science that supports the interest of business. You see this in many areas, but most notably in medical and environmental science. Let's start with the environment, because the censorship of environmental science has been blatant and extreme."
~ Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead -- "The author, best known for the children’s classic “A Wrinkle in Time,” died Thursday at 88."
~ Gay Marriage Approved In California, Again -- "Arnold Schwarzenegger has until mid-October to put his pen where his mouth is on gay issues. For the second time, the California legislature has passed a law that would make marriage in the state gender-neutral. The governor vetoed the first effort back during his more conservative phase."
~ Faludi on 9/11 and American Mythology -- "Journalist and author Susan Faludi is back with another book, “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America,” an ambitious look into the formative mythology, driving forces and fears of the U.S.’s national psyche."
~ The law according to Jack Bauer -- "Lt. General Walter Sharp, staff director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, moonlights as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School. This spring semester Sharp will teach a course titled "The Law of 24" (see catalogue page below). The two-credit class is based, yes, on the Fox Television hit 24."
~ Religion Cuts Both Ways With Electorate -- "For years Americans have said they prefer their presidents to come with strong religious beliefs, and this year isn't any different. In a recent Pew survey, Americans who viewed candidates as religious generally thought of them more positively. But being strongly religious isn't necessarily the deal maker or breaker in this wild-card election."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Exercisers Stuck in Unwalkable Settings -- "Nearly one in four people in the Atlanta area are exercise enthusiasts stuck in neighborhoods without sidewalks or other walking amenities, according to a study that illustrates a problem for many Americans."
~ Scientists probe 'deep' questions aboard EcoOcean's environmental research ship -- "Did the great flood of Noah`s generation really occur thousands of years ago? Was the Roman city of Caesarea destroyed by an ancient tsunami? Will pollution levels in our deep seas remain forever a mystery?"
~ Great Lakes cleanup may reap big benefits -- "A Brookings Institution study suggested that restoring the health of the U.S. Great Lakes could create $50 billion in economic benefit for the area."
~ Hubble's Only Hope Lies With Shuttle -- "Another mechanical failure has the clock ticking for NASA's flagship observatory."
~ New optical microcavity could lead to more efficient quantum computing -- "Right now, there is no shortage of proposed architectures for quantum computers. Scientists are constantly looking for, and developing viable candidates for quantum information processing. And with the production of an open and scalable microcavity, the group of Ed Hinds at the Centre for Cold Matter at Imperial College, London thinks it might have found at least one possibility."
~ Futuristic Boat Made for Multitasking -- "It may look like a giant bug, but Proteus is really a first-class research vessel."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ It’s All Too Much! -- Andrew Cohen -- "Pushing the edge of soul development on retreat in Tuscany."
~ Performatism, or the end of postmodernism -- By Raoul Eshelman, Anthropoetics 6, no. 2 (Fall 2000 / Winter 2001) -- "For the subject, postmodernism presents a mighty, seemingly inescapable trap.(1) Any attempt it makes to find itself through a search for meaning is bound to go awry, for every sign promising some sort of originary knowledge is embedded in further contexts whose explication requires the setting of even more signs."
~ The Impatient Listener -- "There's a reason attention and appreciation are so highly valued -- give them to someone, genuinely, and they'll do almost anything for you -- It's a scarce resource."
~ ASE Call for Papers: Esotericism, Religion, and Nature -- "I’m posting this as a member of the Association for the Study of Esotericism. I attended the 2006 conference at the University of California, Davis, and had a very good time. This is the general area that my Master’s thesis is within so I may see about creating a paper for this if I can think of a good topic."
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