Tea Leaves And The Shift to Spontaneous Mindfulness

Paul raised an important question in my last post about mindfulness. He was wondering if the process of being mindfull will be seen as a quick fix approach to stress. Short answer is: yes. Especially if it is seen as something to "do" in order to solve a problem. Or if it is used to temporarily give a person a quick break and then plunge right back into the ongoing events which are creating the problem.

And then someone (Bob) asked me how it can generalize such that it has more far-reaching effects beyond the several minutes of the "mindfulness minutes" exercise I suggested.

Here's my brief attempt at an answer. Consider tea leaves which are sitting in water. They are just there. But they are also changing the immediate area around them by, shall we say, sharing their essence with the water. Eventually that process will expand, with just a little movement to the entire pot of tea, even when the tea leaves are removed.

When I offered this idea, he spontaneously offered that he found himself being "mindful" of the water during a shower - without any formal attempt or suggestion to do so. He had been practising the mindful minutes "exercise" and could readily see how my explanation fit his experience, i.e., the moments surrounding the mindfulness minutes spontaneously spread without any effort or even awareness into other parts of his experience.

If I may, I like this explanation.

PostScript: I am not addressing the question of whether longer periods of mindfulness practise will create a different experience of mindfulness. Then we would have an interesting process of one word describing different experiences - but I suspect that both short "exposures" and longer periods of "sitting" are tapping into the same process.

Waking Up Falling Asleep Waking Up Falling Asleep

I was going to title this post: Mindfulness and Scatteredness, but a piece of a dream pushed it in a different direction.

Assembling the ingredients.

Ingredient #1: - a conversation with my Saturday morning friend, Ted. We were talking about how people find purpose in life, and then it shifted to one of his favorite topics - propaganda and how to help people to wake up to how they are being manipulated and then having done that, what to do about it.

He talked about doing a workshop or writing an op-ed piece. I suggested writing an essay in the style of Wendell Berry, one of his favorite authors. I talked about how if someone could organize 5 or 10 people who would all agree to write 3 articles for newspapers or give a workshop or two over the next two years, about how they have started to choose a life more based on values and relationship and quality of life rather than scurrying around and always trying to make a few bucks more to feed the consumerist addiction, that the potential impact for a community may be palpable. The stories would not be diatribes against the system but rather testimonies to a certain waking up and how the transitioning was taking place in their lives and what it looked like. (Let this ingredient sit in the background quietly percolating...)

Ingredient #2: Just before giftmas I took a questionairre which was part of a doctoral dissertation for the daughter of a friend of mine. I was happy to help out and the topic of mindfulness helped to increase my motivation to do it.

The survey took a total of about 15 minutes; as it turns out, a pleasant 15 minutes. The questions basically set the stage by asking if I, and the other participants practise any form of mindfulness meditation. Then it went on to ask a series of questions about daily experiences, mundane experiences, and the level of awareness and presence you experience during those times in a progression from never / sometimes / frequently / almost always type of progression.

For me it was like taking a test and finding out what your grade was right on the spot (although you didn't actually get a grade). The "test" was a reflection of how much the practise of mindfulness has generalized and migrated from periods of meditation to your day to day life.

Well an interesting thing happened. The experience of taking the survey "jolted me" in a very positive way. It "operationalized" mindfulness in very concrete terms and brought it to a position of immediacy in my day to day life - or at least in parts of it. Mind you I knew all of this before, and had experienced it times before, but this seemed more immediate. It was like it gave me ideas as to how to put it into effect more often.

The effect was to mobilize me to practising being present and alive, in my daily routines and actions and experiences. Being on vacation certainly made it more easy to be present, etc., but even after I returned to my office I found my ability to maintain it fairly easy. The experience of mindfulness is generally comfortable and as such it has a way of drawing you further into the practise. (Let this indredient quietly do its work of suffusing your environment over a period of a week or so.)

Ingredient #3: A dream fragment. I had a dream a few nights ago. In it several things happened and in one part there was a conversation going on between another man and myself. It was like we were both trying to size up each other, but I had the feeling that he knew something significant that I didn't know, and there was a recollection later that the conversation was around a person's purpose or "mission." There were a few other developments in the dream, and then it ended.

When I got up and started my day I had the good fortune to remember parts of the dream and also to know that there was something in this one which was trying to tell me something and I would do well to not too easily discard it. I set the intent of recalling more of the dream, and bits and pieces of it came back to me over the next several minutes.

The most interesting part was when I recalled that the other man said: "the real question is whether you can stay awake." And then I said to myself: "wow!"

I would have thought that a better question would have been: "once having awakened and then finding that you have fallen back to sleep again, how can you help yourself to wake up again?" But they are probably both equally important questions. (Let that ingredient act as a quickening agent.)

So here I am, on a roll. I've been thinking about "mission," caught on to an operationalization of mindfulness in day to day life, and have a question posed to me in a dream. As I like to say: "neat!"

What to do?

What came to me was to set in motion a practise which would address both questions, i.e., if I "fall asleep" (i.e., go on automatic pilot, go into trance, get caught in the web of mindlessness as manifested by all the addictions, and unthinking consumerism, multitasking, not paying attention, etc.), what can I do to "come to my senses," and if I am being mindful, attention, aware, awake, what can I get in the habit of doing to keep the pattern going. It's like a flywheel process; it takes a fair amount of energy / effort to getting it going, but the more it gains momentum, then the less effort is required to keep it going.

So I've been working with the following process which for lack of a better term I will call Mindfulness Minutes.

Here's the process in some detail and in an approximate sequence. But remember that this is simply an outline which can create an experience of mindfulness. Once you have practised it 5 or 10 or 150 or 1500 times it will become second nature and then you can invent and explore your own pathways and explorations to keep the flywheel of mindfulness going across time and across situations.

1. Set the intent to do it.
2. It may be helpful in the beginning to say: "this is a good time to take a break."
3. Clear a "space" so you can shift gears into being more aware and present. Typically the universal way of doing that is to bring your attention to your breath. Watch your breath; really become aware of it.
4. There is no effort to change anything about your breathing. It may want to spontaneously shift, and if so, bring mindful awareness to that, and let it happen - or not; either way be aware of the experience. Keep it fresh.
5. Whatever you become aware of bring your awareness to it. The second learned reflex during the mindfulness minutes is to not make any judgements about what you are aware of or experiencing. The strategy is one of watching and being aware without the need to label and differentiate. Even when you notice events being judged, evaluated, sliced and diced into favorite or unusual categories, "simply" let mindfulness be aware of the process without judging, labeling and differentiating.
6. You will probably become aware of events in your mind (images, thoughts, conversations) and your body (sensations, feelilngs) or in your environment. In every instance let yourself become aware of what is presently in, or coming into, your awareness. Let it be. Any effort to bring it forth or to push it away is not part of this exercise - except as, yet again, another opportunity to let mindfulness "be and do" its thing.
7. As you become aware of something, notice it, and let it go. It's like you are encouraging impermanance.
8. The "letting go" is without effort. The easiest way I have found to do this is to both bring attention to the event in experience and let the awareness bring you further into the experience and if you are not trying to hold on to it, it will naturally morph across time. Or, when you notice the sensation or the image, notice it and then on your exhale let your mindful attention go to the experience of exhaling.
9. Do this for a few minutes and then move back into whatever you had been doing or whatever the next thing is that you want to do.
10. Now that you have set the intent to do it, and have practised it, the next step is to set up some sort of feedback loop that reminds you at random times throughout the day to take that break. Whenever I walk in a particular corridor I take it as a cue to practise. I have done it when I walk through a door way, i.e., I take that as a reminder of the opportunity. I take a cue from a muscle in my neck; it it gets too tight, I use it as a reminder. The best is to come up with your own.

There is lots and lots more to this, but this is basic introduction that can get you started. Reading this may make it sound complicated, but it isn't. Just do it, or don't. If you do it, be aware not only of what you experience during the mindful minutes, but also what impact it has on you across time.

I would love to hear your comments about this.

Neighborliness

Hi. I'm back. No explanations. Go figure.

We were treated to two snowstorms last week in the space of just over three days. The first was a fast mover which left a foot high calling card. The second was nastier and left two calling cards - about eight inches of snow, soon to be capped by ice. Lots of fun and a great opportunity to share some chili and watch the Patriots win #14. Not bad for a weekend.

So with #1 I'm getting ready to go out and start shoveling. I see my neighbor is having his driveway plowed and wondered if the plow would hit the corner of his stone wall or my mailbox - again.

I shovel about a 10' square up top and then go down to the road to say hello to the hard packed snow and salt, compliments of the town plows. If I don't get to it fairly quickly successive runs by the plows can build up rapidly and then it all compresses and morphs into the dreaded white cement.

My neighbors are out shoveling their remnants.

I call across: "Are we having fun yet?"

Peter calls back: "Oh yeah, how about you?"

I chant back: "Definitely, and it looks like I'm going to have a lot more fun than you."

We both giggle mirthfully, and I start working towards breakthrough - that's how I like to do it. I identify the highest reach of the plow spew, start digging in a straight line towards the road and then declare breakthrough! when I get to the road. Then I start going in random patterns east and west. That's the system. But the pace is definitely guided by not rushing. It'll get done when it gets done and it's always a grand opportuity to listen to the snow falling, saying hello to my body and the satisfaction of doing something concrete.

Peter mosies over and asks: "Want some help?"

I take my time in responding and say: "I pretty much have it covered, but as long as you're here we could work on this part together and talk in between."

We continue at a leisurely pace sprinkling many breaks in between. Actually the shoveling is brief and the breaks are fairly long.

"Here's how I figure it." I say. The whole system started to break down when there was a rush to get things done - fast." "And now that I know that I take my own sweet time, but keep working at it, bit by bit. Sweat's good, difficult is good, discomfort is good, but having to get it all done chop chop quick quick like yesterday is not only not good, it's bad (except for certain circumscribed events.)"

Peter agrees. Now I know I'm on a roll.

(Magically insert another conversation with another friend, Jeff.)

Over breakfast, my treat this time, I ask: "When do you think it all changed, all this speeding up stuff?"

He says: "Easy; it changed the day fax machines became available for the home-office. Then you never got away from it and it also created an expectation of urgency where you had to deal with it right away and get back to the sender."

"I generally agree. I first saw it when I saw the marketing material for the Digital Rainbow. It showed a guy dressed casually and sitting on his back deck overlooking the ocean and the dunes on the Cape. He had his feet up and had the keyboard on his lap and the monitor on a table a few feet off to the side. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I didn't realize how much of a big mouth bass I was until after I bought it and found out that it did nothing to bring me closer to leisure and refreshment."

"Then later I looked at that original marketing material and finally saw the big computer box discretely tucked away behind a planter and all the cables also blended into the background so to be nearly invisible."

I asked Jeff: "So what did you do with your fax machine?""

I loved his answer: "I just tell people that when they send material to him, he will deal with it and get back to them but not to expect anything close to immediacy."

I ask: "How does that work for you?"

"Nicely," he says, "they know that I will deal with it and that's all they really need."

I say: "Good for you! You've managed to create a work structure that works for you, you have trained them and those who can't handle that can move on, and you have reclaimed your life. Neat!"

(Now back to the snow pile.)

Peter and I continued to shovel and talk. We talked about how in the old days and in "the country" people helped one another out. When you needed some assistance they would be there for you, no questions asked. The unspoken contract was that it would be reciprocated, but each person was expected to carry their own weight and make honest effort to work it out by yourself (and with your family) first. That built the bond of trust and made for good neighbors. That built bonds. That built community. And that's what we need now more than ever before.

The next day I brought him some of my not so famous chili (the short version is that I love it but my wife said that we have to get rid of it and that it's in my best interest if I never try making it again...little does she know) and a copy of Duane Elgin's Radical Simplicity for future snowstorms.

"A Very, Very Faint Voice From Deep, Deep Within Me."

I was going through some old files the other day, in preparation to having them shredded.

And I came across a piece of paper with the following three sentences taped to it:

"I heard a very, very faint voice from deep, deep within me. Really only the echo of a voice. It was asking for life."

The tape and piece of paper with the words on it fell off the original sheet of paper on which were similar ideas and pictures pasted all over in a montage style.

I had a sense that the words were still echoing and that they wanted to be heard yet again. This was reinforced a while later when I was putting away the last scattered pieces and I saw that piece again. When I went to tear it in half, it "resisted" partly because of the scotchtape. It was almost like it was saying "don't just throw me away."

I virtually never talk about my clinical work here on this blog. But it's 30 years since I saw that person so I will share this one piece of information. It was written by a young woman who felt that she was a "throwaway child" who came from a family which both abused people and also conspired to scapegoat anyone who dared to speak of those violations. Thus the significance of the voice - very faint, very deep, really only an echo (how hidden is that source?) - asking for life.

It got me thinking about where my voice is, where her voice is, where your voice is.

Is there a part of each of us which is talking to ourselves? An internal dialogue, and ongoing? And do we take the time to listen, really listen? And can we hear it in the midst of all of the noise which surrounds us?

I remember reading Neale David Walsch's book(s) on Conversations With God. He talks about how he was sitting in his kitchen one day reflecting on the wreck that his life had become. And he was writing about it, and he wrote about asking where God was and how come he never speaks to him. To his surprise he "heard" God who said that he had been there all along, but he (David) was never listening. That led to an ongoing conversation between the two of them which formed the basis of his books.

Do we have to hear our own voice before we can hear anyone else's? Or do we have to stop listening to our own voice over and over again, before we can really hear anyone else's?

We all yearn for those conversations, to hear and to be heard.

Thanks for listening. And thanks to that young woman who spoke those words for all of us to hear.

Addendum: Several minutes after I put this post up on my blog, my eyes again found the piece of paper and scotchtape. I picked it up, and the scotch tape fell off.

Chronic Lyme Disease - One Person's Diagnostic Journey

Our bodies are generally so wonderfully resilient that we can shed or counteract most threats to our health. But there are those that still move through all of our wonderful defenses.

Lyme Disease seems to be one of them, although I know very little about it except that if you are bitten by the deer tick and get infected then you may or may not get the tell tale bulls-eye rash. I also don't know if everyone is susceptible to the infection, or if only some get it. But I do know that if it is untreated it can lead to down the road consequences which are varied and which can cause havoc for your wellbeing.

It is in that context that I share the following e-mail which was sent to me by a lovely young woman who is in my community. I found out that she has been having some physical problems which were impacting her life quite a bit, and we struck up an ongoing conversation. Part of that conversation involved my encouraging her to stay active in the diagnostic process and also to please let me know how things develop and turn out.

In response to that request she sent me the following material with an energetic encouragement to share it on my blog. As you can see, she wants to get the "word" out. (N.B. I have excluded a few sentences to further protect her privacy - although as you can see she has created an email identity so that people can contact her directly to discuss further.)

I was diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease.

• 
  Over the past one and a half years plus, I exhausted two internal medicine doctors, two neurologists, two endocrinologists, a cardiologist, an ophthalmologist, a gynecologist, two psychiatrists, three psychologists and three primary care physicians. These doctors ruled out thyroid disease, adrenal fatigue, anemia, anorexia, myasthenia gravis, hemochromatosis, lymphoma, leukemia, cancer, lupus, syphilis, amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, cardiomyopathy, fibromyalgia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou G Gehrig's's disease), and lyme disease! ...Standard blood tests ruled out lyme disease three times.
  
  After all of this, I was treated with medication for anxiety and depression and the treatment was relatively ineffective. I was also encouraged to exercise. (Exercise?! I can't get up the stairs sometimes! And my echocardiogram & stress test at age 36 "had the results that a 55 year old would have".)
  
  My symptoms for the last year and a half have been, in the following progressing order :
  
  ongoing weight loss
  severe anxiety & depression/despair
  short term memory loss & confusion
  SEVERE overall fatigue
  Shortness of breath
  Muscle weakness in arms and legs and difficulty climbing stairs or opening doors or turning the steering wheel in my car
  Muscle cramps/spasms in my legs
  Strong muscle "twitching" (for example: my arm will involuntarily leap up over my head while I'm falling asleep.. or my stomach muscles will belly dance involuntarily...or my hand will suddenly squeeze an imaginary ball 4 times in a row... It's all so WEIRD.)
  
  I also had random but more nagging symptoms like:
  
  peeling finger nails
  recurring rash on the palms of my hands and feet
  tremor in my hands
  increase in facial hair
  heavier menstrual periods
  
  I'd also like to note that two recent fellow lyme disease sufferers experienced paralysis on one side of their faces.
  
  Without anywhere or any doctor to go to next, I was diagnosed, or more accurately "categorized" with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which, as I was told by my second neurologist and final doctor, basically means that all my doctors are stumped and have nothing else to call what I was experiencing -– at least not until my symptoms progressed into one of the disorders that I had already been tested for; or until my symptoms simply disappeared. I'd had every blood/urine test, brain & body scan, and physical or neurological evaluation that I could imagine and they all turned up nothing.
  
  I started telling everyone and anyone that I had been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome hoping that someone with experience could tell me what to explore next. That's when a friend's Mom, had a friend, who had been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was finally correctly diagnosed and successfully treated for Chronic Lyme Disease. Chronic Lyme Disease begins by a deer tick bite carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacteria, that first spreads locally (50% of bites present a rash at the site of the bite) and then becomes systemic.
  
  That's the trick in diagnosing Lyme Disease: Apparently, lyme bacteria becomes systemic shortly after it enters the blood and then there is really no way to test for it once it leaves the blood and enters your body's cells. Once you have the bacteria, it finds a home in random cells in your body, and lies dormant, sometimes for years, and only becomes active during periods of stress. Each subsequent stress period brings on new and/or more severe previous symptoms. It would seem that the bacteria get stronger with each bout of stress in defense of their restful home in your cells.
  
  There is standard laboratory blood test for lyme disease and another more involved lab test called the Western Blot test. The latter is also used to test for people with HIV. Both of these lyme blood tests can offer false negatives simply because the bacteria are no longer in the blood. The Western Blot test encourages certain bacteria to adhere to certain proteins (calcium being one of the most common), and based on the proteins that the bacteria adheres to, they reveal themselves as lyme.
  
  The prognosis for Chronic Lyme Disease is excellent. I'm told that as long as I take the antibiotic long enough to find all hidden bacteria, then I should be free of Lyme for the rest of my days. Tetracycline is apparently the most effective antibiotic, though there are two other antibiotics that are used as well. I'm on Tetracycline now.
  
  The doctor informed me that my symptoms would worsen over the next 2 months or so of antibiotic therapy, but to knuckle through it; By the third month I should be feeling better. The antibiotics have to spend time locating the bacteria, then the bacteria will become violently active as they are attacked... thus the sudden worsening of symptoms before feeling better.
  
  The reason for continuing the antibiotics beyond the first 3 months, or beyond "feeling good again", is to be sure we've given the antibiotic time to find all the lyme bacteria in one effort. If not, I could have a reoccurrence of symptoms later, and a second round of the antibiotics would be less effective and likely unsuccessful.
  
  The infectious disease doctor that has finally diagnosed me specifically with Chronic Lyme Disease is stating confidently that lyme or some other similar bacteria have been hiding out and wreaking havoc in my central nervous system. He believes that the bacteria have likely been causing me trouble for as many as the last 10 years, and could have been bitten back then when I was an avid mountain biker. Lyme could even have been the cause of some of my postpartum symptoms of anxiety, dementia, hyperthyroidism, and severe fatigue - simply in response to the stress of childbirth and my subsequent recovery.
  
  I'm going to be taking 1500 mg of antibiotics (Tetracycline) daily for the next 9-12 months. I've been on that regimen for about two weeks so far and I am so hopeful at last - even though, true to the doctor's word, my fatigue and anxiety have sprung like gangbusters.
  
  I have found this article to be very helpful to my understanding of the process of Lyme Disease.

I hope this information speaks to any other "mysterious" disease sufferers out there. I'm open to having my email MysteryNoMore@gmail.com shared with others any time and to compare notes. I wish someone was there to offer me hope sooner, but the process I went through was necessary. I'm hopeful that I've found my diagnosis, but I'm still listening to other fellow sufferers for other possibilities!

++++

I find it so interesting that the "Lyme" "strengthens" at times of stress. Yet another reason to grab hold of our lifestyles and make decisions and choices which are in our best interest both short term and long term.

Remember the basics, but only always: eat well, rest well, laugh more, don't take it all too seriously, build relationships, keep a positive mental attitude, let go, let go, and keep it simple.

Now Sit Back And Watch The White House "Spin" This

Do you ever wonder why people in power don't speak the truth? Sit back and watch what happens when someone who was in the center of it all says the public secret out loud for all to hear.

Without elaborating, Alan Greenspan states:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/14/AR2007091402451.html?hpid=topnews

Now let's sit back and watch the spin-meisters do their thing.

Go here for additional comment

.........

On the other hand, why is Mr. Greenspan saying this right now?

Of Course it is good for book sales. Could it also be related to the unwinding of the economy and his need to point the finger elsewhere?

My own personal sense is that the best way for Mr. Greenspan to have made this statement would be to have also added that he knew it while it was all developing and in spite of that he chose to remain silent and let the mistake, the whole mistake, take place with his silent complicity.

The Junkie's Last Fix

Until we deal with speed and energy - faster and more powerful - everything will propel us down the same road to depletion. Yes depletion; not just of values and the ability to take life at it's own pace, but also of earth's unreplenishible resources. Ironic, isn't it, experiencing speed and power can make us feel so alive, but it can also be so short sighted if we are borrowing our endowment or our reserves in order to make us feel alive so we can stay pumped up so we don't feel emptiness. Full and empty are both parts of the human condition and to try and deny either part is to throw the system out of significant balance.

Speed and rushing are such addictive patterns. Laura had a quote which I just love: "...and make the best life of enough-ness I can...."

When the junkie is at his or her most desperate, they will do things they never thought they would. We are blowing tops off mountains in the Appalachians. Tops of mountains leveled!

We are destroying tracts of land the size of Florida for some more of that stuff that allows us to propel a two thousand pound metal box at highway speeds, or to sit in traffic, in order to transport one person from here to there and back again, day in and day out.

The CIA tracks how much oil is consumed by various countries. Take a look at this pie chart - I wasn't able to copy and duplicate it in this post unfortunately. That pie is being eaten by a very big piggy.

And this is how one person talks about the junkie's addiction for oil:

"Now, (the story about the Tar Sands) wasn't easy to piece together. The press is almost universally in favor of anything that sounds like "more oil," no matter the cost. Nearly all we hear about is X billion in new investment announced by Y Company. We don't hear too much about the cancellations, delays and cost overruns. A full reckoning is rarely attempted.
But that's what we're here for.

So let's reckon this.

What we have here is arguably the most environmentally destructive activity man has ever attempted, with a compliant government, insatiable demand and an endless supply of capital turning it into "a speeding car with a gas pedal and no brakes." It sucks down critical and rapidly diminishing amounts of both natural gas and water, paying neither for its consumption of natural capital nor its environmental destruction, to the utter detriment of its host. And all to eke out maybe a 10% profit, if it turns out that the books haven't been cooked, and if the taxation structure remains a flat-out giveaway.

All of that, just to produce enough oil to offset the declining conventional oil production in the rest of Canada. Maybe.

And that, my friends, is what I call the oil junkie's last fix. An act of sheer desperation to stave off just a little longer that inevitable day when we are forced to realize that the fossil fuel game is truly over. No more rabbits in the hat. Done.

In the July 2006 issue of Rolling Stone, Al Gore called the tar sands "crazy," a huge waste of energy and an eyesore on the landscape of Western Canada. "For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family's home for four days," Mr. Gore told the magazine. "And they have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But you know, junkies find veins in their toes. It seems reasonable, to them, because they've lost sight of the rest of their lives."

This quote was taken from: Tar Sands: The Oil Junkie's Last Fix, Part 2 September 9, 2007 at: Theoildrum.com

I stand pat on my resolution: I will rush no more!

A Refreshing Look Into A Future

I came across a new essay by Ran Prieur entitled "How to Save Civilization." It walks a new line for me, one that is different from grim visions of a post-apocalyptic post peak oil world and also different from updated versions of 1984.

Please read it. It is well worth your time. In my opinion it outlines thinking and action which should form a foundation for a more mature discussion of planning for the future. Sadly it would be political suicide for any of the current presidential candidates to address any of his points directly, but it has the potential in the hands of some to begin to shift some basic positions, across time. On the other hand, if the level of discussion of the candidates doesn't significantly shift away from their typical bullet points it will, through neglect, make the pain of the future even more intense.

Some quotes: "The deeper problem is that we are on an airplane designed by madmen to only work if it keeps going higher and faster, and the higher and faster we go, the harder we will eventually crash." This is in a context of energy usage, now and in the future, but it could as easily be addressing the shenanigans of the past several years with the process of seemingly ever increasing amounts of liquidity available to people.

And, "...we think we're turning off the air conditioner and bicycling to work to save the Earth. In fact, other people and other economies will just take our place at the Earth-gobbling table and eat it just as fast. what we're really saving is our future sanity, by practicing for the day when we're forced to reduce consumption." This quote really speaks to me and addresses several issues I have been writing about, e.g., the dangers of identifying ourselves with the amount of money and the number of toys which we have accumulated. I liked it also that he addressed the needs for defense to protect your basic sustenance from the "bad-guys."

A few days ago a friend gave me a copy of Lester Brown's book: Plan B 2.0. I have only read a few portions of it, but one of the issues I see with it is that it is premised on an allocation of radical amounts of money from the government to implement many of the ideas. (If I have misread that I apologize in advance.) Big money will do what big money does and I just don't see that as a viable option to turn things around for the planet.

Prieur's approach is different, as I see it. He seems to be saying, it's going to happen, and then it will be a whole new ball game and then here are some further thoughts as to how we can approach that situation such that we don't automatically find ourselves right back in the same situation all over again. Refreshing.

I am curious to hear people's reactions to his essay.

A Few Thoughts About Quality Of Life

Let me get right into it: we have been defined in the economic image of consumerism. Of course there are other parts of the definition; we are a generous nation, we love our freedoms, we tend to be fast moving, we have a spiritual sense, etc. But beneath it all there has been a cloning of the "gotta get money" gene into our social DNA.

Thankfully that gene isn't in our original stem cells, but if those who want to be even bigger fat cats could, they would insert it into every corn flake in every supermarket in every state, city, town, village, and hamlet in America. In fact they would want that desire to be added to the basic instincts such that everyone would have three basic instincts: survival, procreation, and "gotta get money."

And having been defined that way, we grow so accustomed to define and appraise others with the same financial yardstick that we come to think of it as the natural way of things. But I don't think that is the way it has been all along. There has, I suspect, always been throughout history an awareness of how well one person is doing vis a vis their neighbors. That is understandable since we are hardwired to live and travel in packs. If their pack is doing better than our pack, then we want what they have, etc. It's a survival thing.

In the really old days those comparisons might mean do they have more food than we do, and are their hunting grounds better than ours? Have they been able to stay warm during the winter months? Do they have a means to keep their fires going?

Nowadays the comparisons are much more superficial. We don't need twenty questions to assess how others are doing. I was going to say we don't need twenty questions to assess how we are doing...but I'm thinking that we really have to do our financial self-assement in comparison to the "well-being" of others. More on that later, but for now, because the self worth part is determined on getting more and then that is coupled at some mythic time in the future when we will have enough and then we can live the really good life and never have to worry any more about having enough of - you got it - moola.

Let's see, what are the basic dozen questions we need answered to see how we are doing in comparison to others? Some are resolved in "conversation" and others are driven by visuals.

Where do you live?
What do you do for a living?
How far do you travel?
How do you travel?
What clothes do your wear?
Who is your mate (and all of the same questions about the mate)?
Where have you gone for vacations?
How successful do you appear?
How well do you express yourself?
Do you seem confident?
How good do your teeth appear?

Hmmm, I don't know that we will need the dozenth question, or even the baker's dozen question.

For right now, I'll stop. Perhaps you could add a few more. And I'll expand on this later, I promise, because to stop there is to just put us into a nasty despondency based on shallowness. And expand we must; expecially in these troubled financial waters we are observing.

Later.

Good Guys and Bad Guys

My wife and I have been talking about the volume of media articles and programs reporting on horrific events happening in the world - both abroad and, sadly, here also. It seems like there are just endless reports of genocide, terrorist bombings, home invasions, infanticide, beatings, political corruption, and on and on. I know that much of the emphasis on what is presented is driven by a rapacious media machine and other institutions which use fear and insecurity to further their own self-interests. And I know that the lesson of history is that there is nothing new with these actions, even though they are presented as "new" developments but, well, there is just so much of it.

Mary says very thoughtfully: "There is so much evil in the world."

Me: "Yes."

Mary: "But there are good people and those who are doing the right thing."

Me: "Yes. ...You're one of the good ones."

Mary: "You're one of the good guys also."

I then went on to talk about a book I had just finished reading: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. It's about a journey and a conversation between a father and his son. It's not exactly clear but I would put the boy's age at about 5. The setting is a post-Apocalyptic scenario of bare bones survival, shocking descriptions of extreme inhumanity, and constant vigilance in the face of an ongoing condition of imminent and total danger. One moment of inattention could change everything on a dime. Almost everything is pared down to food and water and survival from others. Even the thought of attempting to bond or form alliances with others is almost impossible to risk.

Every plan that you could come up with for sustaining yourself and your loved ones in dire situations is removed in the reality of the author's earth-encircled dust cloud and it's profound consequences for our planet. Food, and the possibility of even growing your own, has never been more literally "off the table." There is nothing but survival and the immediate choices of how to do that and what to hold onto in your humanity. It's as if you are stripped of all hope and confronted only with the present moment and choices contained therein.

It was one of the grimmest books I have ever read, and yet, I couldn't put it down and I would also rate it as one of the best books I have read in some time. As it so happens, it is also a national bestseller and on Oprah's Book Club list - I mention this to indicate that I am hardly the only person who is willing to read disturbing material.

The survival of the father is held onto, it seems, only for the purpose of bringing his son along on the road towards the West. He doesn't know what lies out there but he knows that if he stands still he will be eventually overwhelmed, enslaved and consumed. He also knows that there is no going back. He has seen the desolation of that. There is only forward, and intent and integrity are the only driving forces.

His overriding purpose is the protection of the son, the keeper of the light, the fire, the innocence, the potential. The father's personal survival is only important in the service of protecting his son. Nothing sappy, and he is not even exactly clear why the mission is so important. But he knows that if anything happens to his son, his reason for being here disappears.

The dialogue between the father and son is sparse, pared down like everything else to just the essentials. It's like that's all you have energy left over for and also it's a decision based on energy conservation. Long gone are any discussions of Disney World, the latest movies, and what will it be like after the reality of Peak Oil really sinks in.

And in that dialogue, there is frequent reference to the question of: "Are we the good guys? Are they the bad guys? Are you a good guy? Am I a bad guy because of the decision I/we just made for our survival - at someone else's expense - (and remember on their journey they were always talking about every action leading to either death or survival)?

That was the context of my saying to my wife that she was one of the good guys. Yes, even is Shangri La, in our context of living in the Garden of Eden, we need to think of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

Oh, there is so much to this.

Enjoy the present abundance. Build character. Make wise decisions. Strengthen relationships.