The challenge that faces us during those times is to understand the often knotty connections that link our choices to any kind of bias that would lead us to make a wrong decision. What is a wrong decision? It is one that skews our path away from self respect. The connection is far from simple. In a moment when our egos might be crying out for revenge, or telling us to avoid taking responsibility, it seems like self-defense to obey. Yet we often pay dearly for those selfish moments later on. That’s because ego performs a necessary function but a limited one. In other words, ego can provide some level of self-defense but it can’t tell you how to build a good life that will fulfil your dreams and earn love and respect from other people.

Spiritual practice is the art of awareness of choice. So many of us might be making wrong choices even when we know what is right, as a reaction against being “controlled”. This just shows that on a deeper level, our internal dialogue is so defined by ego that we can hardly imagine a world outside of these narrow minded rules.

The love “guru” Osho once observed that since so many religions have defined sex as a “sin”, the entire sexual experience has become steeped in shame and defined by shame. He says that people have sex as if they want to get it over with as soon as possible. He says that since sex is something beautiful and precious, it should be treated as a celebration of something natural and sacred.

However it’s impossible to do that without conquering the addiction to shame. As long as the mind returns to shame of sex, the impulse remains to fight against the authority that shames it. When this authority is only in one’s own mind, it leads to projection of that shaming side onto those around us, an unhealthy disconnect from reality. Sex soon becomes associated with emotional, psychological and physical suffering. Once-victims may become perpetrators in an attempt to escape pervasive feelings of powerlessness, only to realize that the perpetrator is equally shackled and without free will, the slave of addiction.

Rebellion is a two-dimensional process. As the former President Bush said, “You’re either for us or against us”. Yet actual human experience has far more depth and complexity than that. There is always a way to continue moving energy without entering into a polarity. In spiritual practices like meditation, there is a process of releasing all the old beliefs in order to free the mind to make objective choices again. This is something that can be done every day as a process of returning to the basic realities of human needs. David Rock defines these needs according to the SCARF model:

The SCARF model involves five domains of human social experience: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness.

Status is about relative importance to others. Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. Relatedness is a sense of safety with others, of friend rather than foe. And fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people.

(There are many philosophers who have created their own taxonomy over the millenia, many of them similar to Rock’s. His is simply the most current one and based on neuroscientific research.)

Rock’s model is a generalized one for creating social harmony, but it make sense also when considered within a sexual relationship. These basic needs must be met for both parties in order for the relationship to be stable. Addiction disrupts the reciprocal flow of SCARF between the two people, because the addict’s mind is set up to prioritize the addiction above anything else. Because of the polar nature of addiction (either for or against it), addiction destroys the ability to create win-win scenarios.

1. The Asymptote. Only confirmed as the awesomest mathematical concept of all time that can be learned in high school when the art/architectural collective Asymptote appeared and made mind blowing installation art at Documenta 11.

2. Symmetry. Hello? the “I have two eyes, one, two” song from Sesame Street? Snowflakes? Roses? The Alhambra? Buckminsterfullerene?

3. Periodicity. 1234. Christmas comes but once a year, but it keeps coming back. People who are so against something, that they loop back around and become it, like Republicans becoming gay or dorks becoming cool and vice-versa. I’m only going to say this once.

4.  What combines all of these?  Fractal Geometry.  You think *I’m* on the third vertex of the triangle but really, you are.  Hahaha.

But there is this very insistent voice in my head – I assume you would call it a conscience.  A reasonable voice, that hides in a dusty library while the reactionary voices of defiance, rebelliousness, and ego prance around in Lady GaGa costumes under kleig lights making videos.  This poor, neglected voice clears its throat and creaks out an unheard whisper that in spite of its feebleness happens to be uttered in exactly the right wavelength, in the right orientation of the space-time continuum – and perhaps even in its humble volume also perfectly emitted – this unrequited croak has the power to crumble the stage of Ego’s danse macabre, shatter the foundations of its theater, to dissipate the thunder of its unrelenting mind control frequency.

That moldy old historian inside me (he’s wearing a velvet cap with a tassel on the end of it – don’t laugh haha) opens a gargantuan, gilt-bound tome and points to a faded vellum page.  “I found it on Wikipedia,” he chokes (Huh?  oh well, just roll with it, I think…).  Following his wrinkled, age-spotted finger with my eyes I find myself looking upon a table outlining the Seven Heavenly Virtues (see below; and yes, I realize that the formatting is crazy).

Oh you have got to be kidding me, right?  You are fucking kidding me old man.  Right??!!  The Whaaa??  Aren’t we done with that list of rules crap by now?  Superstitions and heaven and hell?  GET OFF MY GODDAMN BACK!  Right, everybody?  Right???  Somebody get me Lady GaGa in a meat dress and fifty homos, STAT.

Oh, no, the whispering!  He’s whispering again!  What’s that you say, mister Oldy Moldy?  Oh…right.

The danse macabre.  The dance of dead-while-alive, of life-rejection.  “Isn’t it our job,” he says, “while we are living, to taste life?  To taste the satisfaction of having lived each fresh day beautifully, so that when the sun sets on us at the end we rejoice in the beauty that is life?  To live so that to relinquish life to those that remain behind when we are gone, is a great pleasure – to think that life continues in its joyousness, even when we cease to be a part of it?  And, in that case, isn’t it – dare I use the word – a sin to spoil life and sully it so that it ceases to be joyful, and ceases to be alive?”

I can’t answer him, because I am filled with remorse.  And hope.  And love for this beautiful thing called life – for flowers opening, and their perfume.  For different colored birds, for their songs, for the seashells I picked up on the beach as a kid, for the tiny seeds on the skin of a strawberry, all lined up in their perfect little grid.  For the wonderful senses of taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound through which I receive these myriad joys.

The danse macabre had overwhelmed my senses.  Too many abuses of the senses render one quite literally senseless, or “insensitive”.  Too many strong tastes make it impossible to tell Lehua honey from Wilelaiki Blossom.  Too many fashion magazines and advertisments make it impossible to sense the tender story in the aging face of a lover.  Who can appreciate the delicate eroticism of walking in a happy forest with their true love, when they’ve been blasted with industrial eroticism like a Roundup-Ready soybean?

Why is abuse of the senses a dance of death?  Our neurons are living circuitry, and just like the electric circuits in a standard lamp, they can get burned.  And once burned, they are on the verge of dying.  It takes a long time and a lot of patience to nurse them back to health.  Scientists who study meditation are now finding that our neurons regenerate and heal – under very specific circumstances.  Which brings us to our bone of contention – the list of Seven Heavenly Virtues.

The moldy old scholar in my conscience is so very patient.  He is willing to wait forever, if that is how long it takes me.  “There is a good reason,” he explains, “A very good reason why people bothered to write this stuff down.  Do you think it was easy, back in those days?  Learning to read and write?  It was a secret, and a privilege.  It wasn’t easy getting vellum, either, think about scraping all those calf stomachs!  People wrote down a lot of bullshit in those days, just like they still do.  But some things returned to be written again and again, and those things are the enduring truths about how to be human.  Writing them down was the one consolation our miserable, doubt-ridden ancestors had in those times.  They wrote it down in the hope that someday, things would be happier for us all.”

Mother told me, yes, she told me I’d meet girls like you.
She also told me, “Stay away, you’ll never know what you’ll catch.”
Well just the other day I heard of a soldier’s falling off
some Indonesian junk that’s going round.

Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, ay, aaaaaaaay.

Father says, “Your mother’s right, she’s really up on things.”
“Before we married, Mommy served in the WACS in the Philippines.”
Now, I had heard the WACS recruited old maids for the war.
But mommy isn’t one of those, I’ve known her all these years.

Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, ay, aaaaaaaay.

Whatever happened to all this season’s losers of the year?
Every time I got to thinking, where’d they disappear?
When I woke up, Mom and Dad are rolling on the couch.
Rolling numbers, rock and rollin, got my Kiss records out.

Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away, ay, aaaaaaaay.

Awaaaaaay.
Awaaaaaay.

Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.
(Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright)
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.
(Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright)
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.
(Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright)
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.
(Bun E’s alright, Tommy’s alright, Robin’s alright, Rick’s alright)
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.
(Were all alright, Were all alright, Were all alright, Were all alright!!!)
Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.
(Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright)

I’ll tell you why, goddamn it!  Letting that energy slip through your fingers is a waste of your life on this earth.  And for those ne’er do well success stories out there – there IS  an alternate route to fame and a fat bankroll – it’s called adding value to people’s lives so that they are inspired to make voluntary contributions to your survival and existence.

The only problem with that is that many people’s egos hinge on a lack of accountability – the more they can get away with, the more powerful they feel.  FUCKED up.  I know.  It’s ugly.  The only thing one can do when confronted with this situation is to get a big, satisfying buzz off of squelching these little buggers as if they were cockroaches.  Start making accountability fun.

It kind of explains a lot of things.  Like the connection I’ve always sensed between Hugh Hefner, Enron, Lehman Brothers, Dick Cheney (Shooting your friend in the fucking face for god’s sake!  And everyone felt sorry for Dick Cheney afterwards because he must have felt SO bad!  I’ll tell you what feels bad.  It feels bad having some shithead you consider your friend, shoot you in the fucking face.), 9-11, the sadomasochistic tendencies of politicians, Eliot Spitzer, the military-industrial complex…it’s about lack of accountability.  The more of it you can get away with, the better you feel…except not.

It is necessary, in order to change the course of our world, for the haves to sacrifice their advantage at crucial tipping points, to throw the decision in the direction of the common good.  Without this impetus, we simply follow the chain of inevitable calculations to our doom.  Do you have the right to speak here?  Perhaps although one may have the might to do so, one would be better advised to cede the floor to someone with a higher claim than one’s own.  If we all did that, one after the other, voluntarily and peacefully, with forgiveness, the problems of the world would be solved much more quickly.

Dharma is then not synonymous with fate or with the result of an equation that cannot be disputed.  Dharma is the mission of your soul on earth, to reach your tipping points and influence their results for the common good.  Or is it simply, that the equation involved is that of a strange attractor, this elusive quality of positive response elicited from our primordial array of complex functions that guides us on an infinite array of permutations, each one drawing us closer to the imagined bliss of Nirvana, Heaven, Samadhi or what have you.

an example of a strange attractor equation, graphed

In this case, what is it that decides what the strange attractor of pleasure is, actually?  The concerted functioning of each previous equation in an infinite set decides it.  then is there any free will?  Can one decide to follow a different equation or are we all simply magnetized by our strange attractor of survival or pleasure?  Is there no choice but to submit to being swept along in the chaotic flow of it?

Of course there is a choice.  We are all aware of those who, suspicious of pleasure, replace their strange attractor with that of pain.  Some people have an intermittent tendency to do so, and these are the average (mediocre? normal?) people of the world.  Yet there are those who seek the very strongest launching points on one side or the other.  In new age terms these people are labeled lightworkers or darkworkers, in conventional terms they are called great and good, or evil.

Hitler or Buddha?  Jesus being a problematic example, having used his immense ability to generate pleasure and good to endure an experience of indescribable pain, in order to prove what a simple human mind is capable of.  However, one could argue that creating such an impressively sadistic tableau for the annals of human memory was a questionable choice.

a Julia set, named for the French mathematician Gaston Julia

It could be said that the individual’s existence could be graphed as a strange attractor.  Its trajectory through life could be shown as a Julia set, in which even though it seems like one is making decisions at every turn, one ends up creating a very repetitive and predictable pattern in the end result.

This has all kinds of fun implications, for example, that the trajectory of all humankind or even the entire universe could ultimately be altered by an individual who changes the conditions of its Julia set equation.

The synergistic trajectory of all sentient beings’ (you can throw plants and animals in here if you want; I do) course through existence as a community could be plotted as a Mandelbrot set.

a beautiful, soft Mandelbrot image

In this form there are long periods of tiny fluctuation, succeeded by epic, paradigm-blowing periods of evolution, followed by a period of iteration and integration, and then ultimately dormancy preceding another epic period of enormous change.  Karl Marx reference insert here: if only he had lived in the age of chaotic equations!

Well, that sounds neat.  But who cares?

Anyone who has tasted the rewards of virtue knows that they are sweeter, more delicious and nourishing than the rewards of vice.  Suddenly your life becomes a joy to your five senses.  Inner peace and tranquility set in – a welcome relief for your internal organs (all those neurotransmitters involved in fight or flight reactions – norepinephrine and epinephrine for example – are really hard on your body).  Every little step in the right direction means you can literally breathe easier, stand taller, maybe even experience the proverbial spring in one’s step.

Take the Yama of Satya, for example.  The Truth – we’ve all experienced how easy it is to manage or manipulate people’s perceptions so that they believe whatever we want them to believe.  It’s much rarer to have an experience of how powerful the Truth is when left alone.  Sometimes, the most pertinent Truth is that you have no way of knowing or controlling other people’s minds, so you might as well just allow them to be who they are.

Experiencing Truth requires restraint.  The temptation to alter things so that people think just a bit better of you than you really are, or perhaps direct their negative feelings away from your precious Self (or Ego) is like the temptation to eat just one more piece of chocolate or play one more round of Wii – can it really hurt?

In answer, I’ll refer you to the old formula:

Watch your thoughts; they become words.

Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

So what do you think?  Does it really matter if you tell the Truth or not?  Patanjali, following the timeless wisdom laid out by the formula above, pointed out that Yogis who carefully followed the law of Satya  eventually became prophets whose predictions about the future came true.  While it’s also warned that one should not practice Yoga for the purpose of developing “magic” powers – it’s not a bad side effect actually.

Just getting started...

The third wettest spot in the World

1000 foot deep canyon

Taken while zipping!

See the worn out zip guide and the little tourist waaay out there...

Go team Awesomesupercooldynamitewolfsquadron!

Definitely going back!

Gettin’ hydrated

Got out of town on a boat
Goin’ to Southern islands.
Sailing a reach
Before a followin’ sea.
She was makin’ for the trades
On the outside,
And the downhill run
To Papeete.
Off the wind on this heading
Lie the Marquesas.
We got eighty feet of the waterline.
Nicely making way.
In a noisy bar in Avalon
I tried to call you.
But on a midnight watch I realized
Why twice you ran away.
Chorus
Think about how many times
I have fallen
Spirits are using me
larger voices callin’.
What heaven brought you and me
Cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world,
Lookin’ for that woman/girl,
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will.
And you know it will.
When you see the Southern Cross
For the first time
You understand now
Why you came this way
‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from
Is so small.
But it’s as big as the promise
The promise of a comin’ day.
So I’m sailing for tomorrow
My dreams are a dyin’.
And my love is an anchor tied to you
Tied with a silver chain.
I have my ship
And all her flags are a flyin’
She is all that I have left
And music is her name.
Chorus
Think about how many times
I have fallen
Spirits are using me
larger voices callin’.
What heaven brought you and me
Cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world,
Lookin’ for that woman/girl,
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will.
And you know it will.
So we cheated and we lied
And we tested
And we never failed to fail
It was the easiest thing to do.
You will survive being bested.
Somebody fine
Will come along
Make me forget about loving you.
At the Southern Cross.