Thought for the Day: Get out of your head, and do what you heart desires

“Whatever fate befalls you, do not give way to great rejoicings or great lamentation; partly because all things are full of change, and your fortune may turn at any moment; partly because men are so apt to be deceived in their judgment as to what is good or bad for them.”-- Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims

Not sure where this is going. That's kind of my life at the moment. Having recently faced and experienced the disorienting and humiliating experience of being laid off (a whole other story by the way!) I find myself at a crossroads. One of those American 4 way stops (or a mini-roundabout in the UK) that you come across in the middle of nowhere. And that if you were not paying attention, or not wanting to pay attention, you would blow through (or over). Typically people blow through this particular intersection/cross roads. A wake up call of sorts, and most people roll over and go back to sleep.

I know that many people do experience a mid-life crisis. Often when they get laid off in their 40s or 50s, or empty nest in a marriage once the kids have flown the coup, or some other major life transition occurs. I suppose I am actually in that category! Of course the crisis comes when a way of life ends that no longer works or continues to be available to you, and since you are defined by what you do and the experience you have, this can be terrifying and maddening. In my case, I work in IT (information technology) as a program or team manager. Or at least, I did. I got laid off, unexpectedly and for no real reason, other than that my management position was clearly more valuable than me. However, I took the transition gracefully, and as an opportunity to move on to the next level and adventure. I have been in transition before. I know that it takes time, perseverance, doggedness to find something in a competitive job market. Before I was forty, now I am fifty. This time I am certainly more self aware, and less at the effect of things.

I had a conversation with by brother in law over the Thanksgiving holiday where he challenged me to "get out of my head" about what I should do next. He recommended to throw out the past, and what I think I should be able to do, and look freshly at what I would actually love to do. Life is too short to be doing things we do not love. This of course seems crazy to my brain. I am a left-brained, analytical thinker type. And I simply get very focused on doing all the "right" things we you are looking for work. Take a step back. Brush off the resume, update your experience and skills list, post it online via the main job boards, sign up for job alerts with all the necessary keywords, cull the morning email alerts for good matches, respond to recruiters who send you jobs that match your profile, submit online applications and draft cover letters describing your interest and relevant experience, signup for networking events, and show up to pitch yourself to others. It's exhausting just describing all this. And not very effective. So far (3 months), I have had one set of productive interviews, where I got down to the finalists and got pipped at the post. But I know that this is a longer game than most expect. I just have to keep focused.

Or do I? It's unfortunate that your resume sets you up for more of the same jobs you have done before. There is generally no assessment of transferable skills, and invitation to try out other new and exciting areas. I say "generally" because I received one invitation to interview with a local marketing company based on my management experience. I will check it out just because they seem to be thinking outside the box. And then I think I need to take another step backwards. Consider those bucket list of things that I have set myself to experience in this lifetime. And then figure out how to do them with a different or modified career. More to come... [Thinking outside the career box]

Thought for the Day: Embrace your shadow, become whole again

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves" - Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

I was opening up my computer this morning, and the following quote popped up on my social media feed. This reminded me about the Shadow class that I did some time back, the Shadow Effect book by Debbie Ford that I read, and other emotional intelligence training I have done. Things that upset us or push our buttons are usually good indicators of some aspect of our own personality that we are not happy or proud of. This may well be something that happened to us a long time ago, and our response to it was "Never again!" I won't be hurt, humiliated, fooled, jilted, let down, etc the same way again. So I take on a new resolution to do "X" and as a result split off part of my personality into my shadow.

I had one of these experiences when I first came to the United States in 1989. I came over "the pond" to go to graduate school and complete a PhD. I had just graduated from Oxford University where I read Chemistry, and my undergraduate adviser at that time got hired to a Biochemistry faculty position at Washington State University. I had briefly looked around for jobs in the UK, and come to a fairly rapid conclusion that I wasn't going to get more than a "lab lackey" position without a PhD. So when my advisor invited me to join him, I pretty much jumped at the chance. I went from the dreaming spires of Oxford to the rolling wheat fields of Pullman. Boy did it feel like I just arrived in Kansas from the Land of Oz!

I came over in the summer well before the Fall semester in order to get settled in. We moved the lab into a brand new wing of the Chemistry building. I also spent time finding a place to live, roommates to rent with, etc. I also needed "wheels" as being in the middle of nowhere (rural America), you needed a car to do just about anything (drive to the work, the store, the next town...). I searched for used car deals, and found a nice little hatchback Mazda GLC (old model of Mazda 3). This brought me into the Ed Esselbaum Toyota dealership in Moscow, Idaho, and the exciting prospect of purchasing my first car. It was not long before the shenanigans of used car salesmanship began.

I don't remember specifics. It's probably a PTSD thing! I do remember being rushed into a large financial transaction, feeling overwhelmed by my new car salesman "friend" and bringing my advisor in the next day to help me review the paperwork. It all seemed in order, and so I became the proud and rather shell shocked owner of a new, used car. My new friend had conveniently been able to arrange a loan for me, which was interesting since I had no credit history in the USA. I wanted to move the loan to my new Credit Union rather than the bank that the dealership had used. That's when it turned out that the loan was for $1000 more than the "trade-in" value of the car. My bank would not loan me more than the Blue Book value, so I had to wire money over from the UK in order to pay off the excess and transfer the loan. Needless to say, I was devastated and brough to tears over the phone when I checked in with my parents.

This was a hard lesson for a young adult, learning that people do not necessarily have your best interests at heart. Obviously people who I hardly know, who start calling me their friend, are probably just trying to manipulate me in order to take advantage. But based on this experience, I pushed the extrovert, outgoing, engaging personality into my shadow, and decided that anyone behaving that way should never be trusted. Nowadays, I am able to distinguish people’s behavior better and to be open to extravert people, as well as being more extroverted myself without thinking that’s a bad thing. There are times when you want to pull that “shadow” arrow out, and others when it should stay in the quiver.

Thought for the Day: Life is an experience, just go do it!

"The only thing worse than experiencing something, is not experiencing anything due to the fear of experiencing it"-- Richard Appleyard

A while back, I wrote down this statement "The only thing worse than experiencing something, is not experiencing something," assuming that it was a quote that I had read. It is kind of a general statement of the saying "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." So I decided to look up the reference in the modern Oracle of Information, Google. I would say Oracle of Knowledge, but that would be giving Google's algorithms way to much credit in the era of "Fake News." Anyway, I found no results which was a little astounding. Usually I get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of hits on my searches. So it is always refreshing, and interesting to get none.

Of course, Google being Google immediately offers an alternate search using all the words in the sentence you have typed. 

"The only thing worse than learning from experience, is not learning from experience." -- ??

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about." -- Oscar Wilde
""Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Confucius

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/oscarwilde128481.html

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/oscarwilde128481.html

It got present to me again recently when my daughter started receiving rejections to her college applications. The university application process is long and frustrating. That is the subject of a blog of its own! But it is crushing to a parent to see their children's hopes and excitement dashed. And as a parent, you cannot show your disappointment, and feed into the drama and self-deprecation that comes along with rejection.

The one thing that came to mind for me was a recent revelation through some of my readings of Alan Watts and Ekhart Tolle. It is impossible to fail at life. Life is an experience, and the gift is to have a life to experience. "What will be, will be." And acceptance of your situation, whatever it is, gives you the power to do anything. What pretty much always hold us hostage is the mind chatter about everything and anything to do with what happened, trying to explain and justify everything. And this will cycle into a emotional cascade of anger or sadness. This is the minds way of processing the experience, and should normally result in a cleansing of the emotions. Unfortunately many or most of us get caught up in the "justice" of the situation, and we want to be vindicated about what was done to us. And then that becomes the whole point of the experience, rather than having the experience, and moving on. And then we spend our life avoiding experiences that might lead to that experience again. Only we typically find, in looking out for an experience, we continue to see and have those types of experience!

So, what we can do is recognize how we are responding to what happened, and reflect on whether we are over-reacting or getting into a self perpetuating emotional trap around it. And if we see others getting trapped, then help them through the experience by listening and guiding them forward and away from a self-perpetuating experience. Not easy! People have to see their own trap. You cannot do that for them. And some people have to hit rock bottom before they do. How do I know? Because I have been there in my own experience.

Thought for the Day: The Ego -- Devil or Distraction?

Negative states of mind, such as anger, resentment, fear, envy, and jealousy, are products of the ego." -- Ekehart Tolle

Beware of the Ego which has a tendency to think it is right about everything!

The other day, I have to admit, I threw a bit of a tantrum. It was about money. Pretty typical. It is usually about one of two things. Money or Technology. The latter is ironic as I work in the world of Information Technology or IT. Anyway a fail in any of those areas are two of my hot buttons. Or should I say my Ego's hot buttons. The funny thing is, I am having a hard time recollecting exactly what it was about. But it is usually about penalty fees, or account errors such as incorrect charges or over charging. Oh that's right, it was an "outrageous billing error" (my Ego's words) on our Water bill. Of course, it was just a technical screw up of the computer system. Let me explain...

Last year, we had a water leak in our house. Sounds serious? Not really. It turned out to be a leaky toilet cistern. The system that fills and stops filling the tank was worn out, and was constantly trickling water through. Unfortunately, it did this very quietly. So it was not a perceptible leak visually or audibly. However, that "not serious" leak almost tripled our water bill. The problem is that our local water provider only bills and reads meters every quarter (three month period). So we did not find out about the leak well into the second quarter, and then when we fixed the leak, it took another quarter to note that the water usage was reduced and get our bill adjusted back down. Anyway, patience prevailed, or should I say that Jennifer's plumbing skills and patience prevailed, and we eventually got the bill back to normal.

So fast forward to this Winter, which was quite the freeze this year (2016/2017) in Portland, Oregon. We had several snow storms that not only coated the city in inches of the white stuff, but the temperature stayed below freezing for over a week. This of course meant that the City field crews were unable to do their usual work, including the meter readers. Soooooo, the City used "estimated reads" for our Water bills this cycle. Annnnnnd, guess what? They use the recent past billing cycles to do the estimate. So what happens in our case? You guessed it. The calculation seriously over estimated the read as it referenced the usage that included the water leak. It was like a bad horror movie sequel, "Revenge of the Sewer Zombies," with the previous water billing problem rising from the dead. My Ego was not impressed, and poor Jennifer sitting across from my desk at home, got a earful of the tirade.

An Ego meltdown is an interesting thing to experience and observe. Generally it resembles a 2 year old tantrum in terms of the inconsolable upset over something relatively trivial, e.g., a dropped ice cream, the denied new toy or food item. However the adult tantrum is based on a history of negative experiences that your Ego draws upon to reinforce the unjust and unfair new circumstance you just experienced. It can be directed at no one in particular, or unfortunately for those close to and around you, it is often directed at others.

One of the real challenges in the modern world is being with what is. Or "Being in the Moment."I am reminded of a old story about a Persian King who became tired of being torn between happiness and despair. So he sent for a wise man living in his Kingdom, who was known for being enlightened. He requested that he bring him something that would bring him balance, peace, and serenity, and he would pay whatever price he asked. The sage said that he may be able to help, but the price would be more than his entire kingdom. But he would give it as a gift, if the king honored it. The man went away and after a time brought him back a simple ring on which was inscribed "This, too, will pass." The king demanded an explanation. The sage replied "Wear this ring and whatever happens, before you call it good or bad, read the inscription. That way you will always be at peace."

This reminds us of the impermanence of life, and that you can no more hang on to happiness as you can hold on to sadness. The Ego lives in the past, and projects this on to the future. Freedom comes from stepping outside that narrow corridor, and being with whatever happens. That does not mean accepting things unconditionally, and being a push over or an easy mark. But it does mean not letting the Ego throw a tantrum, and considering a measured response rather than a vindictive one. I have found this helpful whenever I start to get upset about something. It doesn't mean my Ego doesn't react anymore, but I am able not to feed into it further.

Thought for the Day: Beware of the Ego that promote Human Stupidity and Malice (Aldous Huxley)

"At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justified of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political ideas." - Aldous Huxley

I am always inspired by writers and philosophers who gain insight to the human condition years ago, and it is clear that the same flaw or human trait exists today, only it is probably worse than better from someone having pointed it out. The misery that is being amplified in today's geopolitical climate of stupidity and malice toward others, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing which all inherently fail to listen and respect the views of others, and see that we are all equal within the cosmos.

Stupidity is a harsh and demeaning word as it is generally used as an insult to another. However its definition includes "tendency to make poor decisions or careless mistakes," and "having or showing the lack of ability to learn and understand things." We have a technology culture now that enhances the ability to create a world view bubble around ourselves. The social networking we create and online tracking that occurs on and across websites tends to reinforce whatever behavior we have. What social media sites have decided for us is that we only want to see new information that fits the pattern of the old information that we have viewed, clicked and searched on. This means that the algorithms become a self re-enforcing system that feeds me more information on my world view, correct or not, that validates the position I take regardless. It actually facilitates poor decision making and lowers ability to learn facts and understand things. Yes, Facebook is making us stupid!

Alan Watts pointed out in the 70s that technology, back then the television set, was beginning to numb the human brain into a passive state, watching an electronic reproduction of life on the screen rather than participating in experiences in the real world. This isolation of people in a private world of their own is really the creation of a mindless crowd. And that generally the spectacles we see on the TV involves depiction of violence and slaying rather than love and connection. This leads one to draw the conclusion that expressions of physical love are far more dangerous than expressions of physical hatred. This leads to a society which is devoted, unintentionally indeed but in actual fact devoted, not to survival but to the actual destruction of life. Fast forward to the 2010s and we have not improved our situation. In fact, it is a lot worse. The TV screen has been replaced by the computer screen and the mobile phone screen. Ever more insidiously isolating us, even as it claims to increase our social connectedness. 

If you want to disrupt this effect, then you need to friend people with opposing views, and like all their stuff. You need diversity in your life to mess with the algorithms that are tracking you. Go left when they expect you to go right. I am always amused by the fact that our family Amazon account is used for purchases by everyone in the family, and consequently I see very weird recommendations pop up because my wife or daughter bought something that I have no interest in. We also have ad blockers and script blockers installed on our Web browsers that prevent the cross-site tracking. And finally, you need to turn off the screens and get out and experience real life, and real, meaningful face-to-face interactions with others, getting to know them, their cultures and points of view (even if they are radically opposed to your own)!

Thought for the Day: Life is not a Journey (Alan Watts)

"But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played." -- Alan Watts

Sometimes as we strive for happiness, in the items we acquire, the money we make, the pleasures we seek, we forget that the purpose of life is "not to get but to receive."And again, not to receive stuff, but to receive experiences, interaction with others, "to be or not to be" in the moment. To wonder at the experience of life, and whatever it brings.

For me, it's nature and space that grounds me. To be in awe of the painting book of colors in a sunset, to marvel at the view of a golden sunrise over a volcano, to wonder at the burst of light from a star 92 million miles away, to look up at the sky at night and realize you are on a piece of rock hurtling and spinning through space, and to watch the time-lapse photography of the Milky Way as our Starship Earth travels through the Cosmos. That's when I realize that our time alive is a miracle, precious and fantastical. That is a moment of awareness, of being awake to your existence and not asleep the in the daily grind of living and dying, the journey between the nursery and the crematorium.

I remember being amused at the concept of saving the planet, as the planet has been here for billions of years and will be here for billions more. It's actually more about saving ourselves. If we destroy the biosphere that supports us (and many other life forms), it will be us that perishes, and not the planet. And the amazing thing about life is that it finds a way, and life will continue on this planet as it has done after other mass extinct events, and will return perhaps without the humans that destroyed things the last time around. Life exists even in our biosphere in very inhospitable areas where we cannot.

On a cosmic level, our species has existed but for the blink of an eye. We cannot do anything but be in the now. For us as individuals, it is all about the experience!

Thought for the Day: What does your Spiritual Journey look like?

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” -- George Moore

This week, I went to my first Toastmasters meeting in a while. It was at a small group, located at a private club called The University Club, in downtown Portland. I enjoyed a very good Keynote Speech on "Fear." The speaker's closing, "take away" message? "Fear is your Friend." So when it came time for Table Topics, a section of short speeches generated by volunteers from a question on a card pulled randomly from a deck, I embraced my fear and stood up...

My question? "If you were to take yourself on a spiritual journey, where would you go?" This threw me a little as my spiritualism is an area I have recently been wrestling with, and I have by no means a cogent answer or speech prepared.

I have been on a spiritual inquiry since 2011 when I had a wakening experience. It was after an intense weekend workshop designed to bust up the human nature that we have all been indoctrinated with. I became aware of how close minded I had become. I don't think it matters how you think or others think your brain is wired, but I had grown up a very analytical, science-loving kid enjoying math and computers, and not being good at literature and art. Of course our education system loves to reinforce stereotypes and I went all the way, attaining a PhD in Biophysics. Not a lot of room for spiritualism in that space. 

I was born in England, baptized within the Church of England (CofE). So basically I grew up as a Christian under the Protestant Anglican denomination, whose head of church resides in England.  Some of you may know this was due to a falling out with the Catholic Church around the time of Henry VIII (I won't digress!) I attended CofE schools and the King's School was located in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral, where the aforementioned head of the CofE had a residence. I went through basic religious classes and was confirmed at thirteen. I always enjoyed my religious studies mainly because it was a comparative class where we learned about all faiths and spiritualism not just Christianity. I also remember reviewing the highly fragmented nature of Christianity with Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Evangelical, Southern Baptist, etc. From one perspective, a wonderful diverse interpretation of a teacher's message of love and compassion. From the other, a myriad of reasons to ostracize, marginalize, persecute, commit genocide and wage war. The irony and hypocrisy of this was not lost on me. I grew up with IRA terrorism in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants and IRA bombings that even reached London.

I have not stayed a practicing Christian. I basically grew out of it's limiting world view as my education continued. Blind beliefs don't sit well with scientists, who insist on data and evidence to back up any hypotheses or theories. I went on to study Chemistry at Oxford University. I remember having Christian friends with whom we would have philosophical debates until the small hours of the morning. One of the extra-curricula activities and experiences that you don't see in the prospectus. Whatever subject you study at university, it affords you the opportunity of conversing with your peers on "the meaning of life, the universe and everything," (Douglas Adams, RIP). And some of your friends might well be studying philosophy or modern religion, or even just blindly following it. Of course those conversations increasingly frustrated me. It's hard to debate with people cannot see beyond a book or dogma, and who don't seem to question or want to inquire what they think or believe.

What I did not realize was that I was starting down a path to create my own trap within the dogma of science, which of course has its own blind beliefs. Again, the scientific message is true. Hypothesis and experiment. However, scientists have a tendency to be stuck in their own limitations of current knowledge, which can constrain and limit the creative thinking needed for transformational theories and results. I have heard it explained in terms of dimensional constraints. Imagine a 2-dimensional being free to move around a 2-dimensional (x, y) space, and that sees no constraint on their world. Since they don't perceive a third dimension (z), they have no concept of it. As 3-dimensional beings, we can look down on a 2-dimensional world and see that those beings are limited in their perception of reality. But try explaining to a 2-dimensional being the concept of a third dimension in 2-dimensions. Furthermore, imagine how a 2-dimensional being who had theorized the concept of a third dimension would sound to others. Probably insane. Rather like Galileo and the theory that the earth revolved around the sun back in the 17th Century. In fact, over the course of human history people who have come up with transformational thinking and theories in science have been persecuted and vilified by the scientific community of their time. It often takes years, and generations (as old scientists die off), before thinking can shift. 

I became so closed minded in my "scientific" thinking, it almost cost me my marriage, and my family. My awesome wife and life partner became an irrational, flaky, non-sensical person, with kooky-sounding, non-scientific beliefs. My wife and daughter became a financial burden, trapping me in my dead-end, unfulfilling job. I was working hard bringing in the only income, and my family was working hard on spending it, leaving nothing for me to enjoy. What I discovered for myself in 2011 was how much I had created the world in which I was living. I made it fit my world view, where I was always right, and everyone else was always wrong, or to blame. What I paid for "being right" was the loss of love, affinity and relationships with people around me. It was time to separate fact from fiction, distinguish what happened from what I made it mean, be open to everyone and everything. Which got me thinking about what it means to be me!

After rambling about my spiritual experiences for over two minutes, and thus disqualifying myself from contention in the best Table Topics award (I was soooo disappointed ;-), I realized that rather than wondering where in the world I would go (to look without) on my spiritual journey, the true spiritual journey is to reflect on one's self (to look within).