TODAY'S QUOTE!

"There is no enlightenment outside of daily life."
Thic Nhat Hanh

TODAY'S QUOTE!

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all."
Thomas Szasz

TODAY'S REJECTIONS YOU GOTTA LOVE QUOTE!

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
Gary Cooper (on his decision to reject the leading role in "Gone With The Wind")

TODAY'S REJECTIONS YOU GOTTA LOVE QUOTE!

"Who the hell wants to copy a document on plain paper?!"
(1940 Rejection Letter to Chester Carlson, inventor of the XEROX machine. In fact, over 20 companies rejected his "useless" idea between 1939 and 1944. Even the National Inventors Council dismissed it. Today, the Xerox Corporation has an annual revenue in the range of one billion dollars.)

IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN? NOT!

THIS is a beauty to go along with the other two posts I put up recently on the placebo effect and Prince the dog.

Chase Britton was born prematurely and doctors were prepared to diagnose him with cerebral palsy. When they tested him, they said he had the MRI results "of a vegetable." No kidding. They said it. Why? Because Chase had no cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls motor skills, balance and emotions!

But Chase is no veggie, folks. He eventually managed to sit up on his own, something he shouldn't have been able to do without a cerebellum to provide balance. Next he learned to crawl, first dragging himself military-style, then pushing himself upright. Now, he's learning to walk.

"He keeps going," his mom said. "He keeps picking up new things and progressing. We call it, 'Chase pace.'"

In the fall, Chase started going to a specialized preschool near his New York home three days a week.

"I'm in awe of him every day," Sharon Schultz, his teacher at CHC Learning Center in Williamsville, N.Y., told WGRZ.

"Things that, based on that diagnosis, he should not be able to do, he is doing. I mean, walking up and down the hall, riding a bike, holding a pencil or a pen to work on projects, using scissors."

Chase also loves to play on his Ipad with doting brother Alex.

"The doctors didn't know what to say to us," Chase's mother said in a telephone interview. "No one had ever seen it before. And then we'd go to the neurologists and they'd say, 'That's impossible.' 'He has the MRI of a vegetable,' one of the doctors said to us."

Chase has left doctors bewildered and experts rethinking what they thought they knew about the human brain.

LOL! You gotta love the experts!!

You think the doctors might want to consider that the mind is actually not located in the brain?

TODAY'S REJECTIONS YOU GOTTA LOVE QUOTE!

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer founder, on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

MAD HOUSEWIVES/KILLER MOMS!

THIS was in the New York Times today, an open confessions of a self-described "mad housewife" who has been violent with her children. It is very honest and courageous, and I applaud KATHERINE ELLISON who revealed herself in this way.

Here's Katherine saying something shocking but true that really needs to be said:

"The mad housewife is a reliable comic icon, her trials trivialized as boredom and cabin fever. It’s hard for most people to accept that mothers — even maybe their own mothers! — can be unloving, and sometimes unsafe."

Right. Being a parent, in no way, shape or form, guarantees that a child will be receiving love. My readers know that I have written and spoken a great deal about the terribly dysfunctional state of marriage and childrearing in our society. I am also going to talk about it on video soon. During this past week, we have been filming a promotional video for our upcoming debut of the FULL PERMISSION LIVING SHOW, which will be a regular web television program on the soon-to-be launched CITY ROCK NETWORK.

Here's an excerpt from one of the episodes of the FPL Show:

"Parenting, as we know it, folks, is not only dysfunctional, it is impossible! In the soon-to be-extinct nuclear family model (just follow the statistical trends), two people (usually young) are expected to undertake the most incredibly taxing job on earth, twenty-four-seven, for two decades, with no qualifications! That's right. Parents, of all available adults, are usually the least qualified to raise children. You need to pass two tests to get a license to drive a car or sell real estate. It's required to have a college degree or some period of focused training for most careers. Yet, to have children, one of the most important and difficult occupations in our society, all you have to do is (excuse me) fuck somebody!"

Stay tuned for more, and once again, thank you, Katherine Ellison, for speaking the truth.

"The Myth of Joyful Parenthood: The Ultimate Cognitive Dissonance?"

Worthy reading by one Wray Herbert HERE.

Here's an excerpt:

"Raising children is hard, and any parent who says differently is lying. Parenting is emotionally and intellectually draining, and it often requires professional sacrifice and serious financial hardship. Kids are needy and demanding from the moment of their birth to... well, forever. Don't get me wrong. I love my children dearly, and can't imagine my life without them. But let's face the facts: Study after study has shown that parents, compared to adults without kids, experience lower emotional well-being -- fewer positive feelings and more negative ones -- and have unhappier marriages and suffer more from depression."

This needs to be explored and talked about people. Let's talk!

THIS DOG STORY SHOULD CHANGE EVERYTHING!

Okay, now check this out. This is a true story. It was in the Huffington Post today. The headline: "Prince The Dog Returns Home After 5 Years, Finds Owner Myrna Carillo's New House!"

Here's an excerpt from the news item:

"If you move four times in five years, it's hard enough for the mail to find you, let alone a dog. But that's just what one smart Shih Tzu did this past week. According to NBC News, Myrna Carillo lost her beloved dog Prince over five years ago in California. Since then, she has married, had two boys... and moved four times. And yet, somehow Prince showed up on her doorstep last week. Myrna immediately recognized the furry dog, and more impressively, the dog recognized her. Prince is already bonding with Myrna's sons, and is reacquainting himself with his rediscovered family.
This isn't the first pet miracle. Last year, a cat returned home after going missing during Hurricane Katrina five years ago. And an Australian dog returned home after a nine year disappearance. As for Prince -- while his house may have changed four times in his absence, there seems to be no place like home."

This story demonstrates perfectly that there is a collective consciousness that transcends space and time and our five physical senses, that we all really are connected in ways we normally don't see. If you really think about it, a story like this should be major news, and should change everything. Instead, it's just a "cute" story hidden in the back pages, if it's even reported at all. "Coincidence." "A mystery." "Whatever." "Can't explain it."

Oh well, what's for dinner, Prince?

SUPERBOWL FEMINIZING MEN? OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?!

Well, this is fun! A piece in the DAILY BEAST, entitled "The Superbowl May Harm Your Masculinity," caught my interest this morning. Turns out, though, that the article was about how excessive carbohydrates, of the kind ingested in mammoth proportions by many men during football games, cause testosterone levels to drop.

Here's an excerpt:

"As you stock up on pizza, nachos, chips, soda, and beer for your Super Bowl feast, here’s something you might want to consider: Those foods are feminizing men. Not exactly the way you meant to celebrate our annual tribute to red-blooded American masculinity, is it? But undeniably true. Many of the unhealthy things we eat today have been found to cause a drop in sperm count and testosterone, the essential male hormone. If you routinely eat sweets, or carbs such as bread, pasta, baked goods—which your body turns into a form of sugar—you are continuously hammering your ability to produce testosterone."

Okay, that's a fascinating but basically 3-dimensional cause and effect linear formula: a lot of carbs/sugar lowers testosterone, which leads to various physical problems related to the production of that hormone.

So, let's offer a 4th dimensional look at the situation, one that isn't as linear and includes the intentionality of the nacho-chomping, beer-guzzling pig skin aficionado.

For example, what if the guy watching the majorly macho gladiatorial game known as football is doing so with such extreme gusto, and gustatory bingeing, because he is compensating for his own latent feminine feelings, feelings that cause him a great deal of subconscious anxiety? In other words, maybe that big guy with the big bowl of chicken wings and blue cheese dip is reassuring himself that he's a manly man by watching 300+ pound behemoths give each other concussions. Yet, by virtue of the gorging, he is emasculating himself hormonally while consciously fantasizing about extreme masculinity. (I'm sure that a statistical study of the incidence of men having sex with their girlfriends or wives on Superbowl Sunday evening would show a dramatic drop-off of marital coitus.)

Personally, I like to watch the Superbowl, even though I don't really watch football for most of the season. I like the drama of high-level sports contests at times, and the Superbowl can be quite a spectacle in that regard. (True confession, though - I TiVo the game, so I can fast forward through the commercials and some of the navel gazing. And I won't be having any nachos or beer. Maybe some organic popcorn and a Manhattan, but only one, especially because I may still want to be able to...

TODAY'S QUOTE!

"Study after study has shown that parents, compared to adults without kids, experience lower emotional well-being -- fewer positive feelings and more negative ones -- and have unhappier marriages and suffer more from depression."
Wray Herbert

Repost: "Faith versus Logic: Spock's Rebirth!"

This is an oldie but goodie, first posted in 2008.

Interesting little piece by Stacey Lawson called "What is faith?" on the Huffington Post. What I like about the brief article is that she doesn't equate faith with religion. Rather, she addresses the apparent conflict between faith and "rational" thinking.

Lawson:

"Faith seems not quite natural to the modern mind. Mind is rational while faith is irrational. Mind is logical; faith illogical. Mind is doubtful while faith is doubt-free. We are more committed to the calculations of the rational mind, than to the holistic wisdom of spirit. When we put more stock in the workings of our rational mind than on discerning a deeper truth beyond the intellect, faith seems relegated to a precariously irrelevant position."

I agree, Stacey. But what exactly is faith? Wishful thinking? Hopefulness? Belief? No, faith is the precursor to knowing, and knowing comes not from the mind, but from the body and from our feelings. The more connected we are emotionally, the more those inklings of faith turn into knowing.

A while back, I posted an excerpt from a class I taught on "gut feelings," in which I talked about how our "second brain," located in our solar plexus, is where our best and most certain decisions are made from (http://fullpermissionliving.blogspot.com/2008/01/gut-feelings.html). When we "feel" the rightness of a choice, we don't second guess ourselves, but when we "think" our way to a decision, the potential pros and cons can consume us for great lengths of time without ever leading to a feeling of certainty.

Here's Stacey Lawson again:

"Faith is the decision to step out of ego and deny its claim on a finite reality. Faith is about possibility. It is utter positivity. An unknown sage once said, 'God does not ask about our ability, but our availability.' Are we available to believe in something higher than our own ego-mind? Are we available to trust in a pervading wisdom that can know and do everything? Are we available to suspend doubt and disbelief and live in utter positivity? I leave you with these questions of faith."

I'll leave you with a quote from "Mr. Spock," in one of the later "Star Trek" movies, "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country." By this time in the saga, Mr. Spock, who was the ultimate exalter of logic throughout the early years of the series, had experienced life and death and rebirth, and he had also discovered the value of feelings. When a young Vulcan he is mentoring criticizes some behavior as "illogical," Spock scolds her by saying: "Logic, logic and more logic! Logic is only the BEGINNING of wisdom, not the end!"

Yeah! Live long and prosper!

Repost: "Jump the Fear Shark!"

Fear. It is perhaps the most crippling of all the so-called "negative" human emotions. Why? Well, first of all, ninety-nine percent of our fears are irrational. Right. That's a lot of crazy time. Nonetheless, it's true that most of our fears are a reaction not to any actual danger in the moment, but to possible dangers in a vague possible future. As a result, our ability to react flexibly to normal life situations in the present is greatly inhibited by irrational fears. They sap our energy levels and create tunnel vision, literally and figuratively. In addition, since the human psyche is always trying to self-correct, cleanse and heal itself of negative emotions caused by negative thoughts, we will end up attracting events that seem to meet the criteria of our worst fears in order to work them through.

Here's the Pathwork Guide, channeled by Eva Broch, saying it quite eloquently:

"As long as you have fear, it is sometimes inevitable that you experience what you fear in order to lose the fear. If fear can be shed by realizing the truth that there is no reason to fear, then it is not necessary to experience it. But you are often incapable of this insight, so you must familiarize yourself with the feared circumstances until they lose their threatening aspect."

Yes. This is one of the driving forces behind the "repetition compulsions" so many suffer from, those patterns of going through the same painful situations or relationships over and over. What the Guide is saying above is that part of the "goal" of the repetitions is to neutralize the fear of the situation being repeated. (That reminds me that in the 1970's, I had to watch "Jaws" about a dozen times before I was finally convinced that Roy Scheider actually killed that damn fish! And then, to top it off, that same summer, I finally got back in the water on an East Hampton beach to test myself in the ocean. True story. Yep. Refreshed and confident from a round of body surfing, I swam ashore to find... a dead shark on the beach!! YOW!!!)

There's more. If your motivations for the good things of life that you desire are covertly or overtly fear-based, you will again be thwarting yourself.

The Guide:

"As long as you want the positive mainly because you fear the negative, your fear barricades the way to the positive. If you want happiness because you fear unhappiness, happiness remains unreachable. If you want happiness for its own sake, and not because you fear its absence, nothing will block its attainment. And this is an enormous difference.

"Every aspect of living follows this principle. If you desire health in a spirit of fearing sickness, you prevent health. If you fear the aging process, you prevent eternal youth. If you fear poverty, you prevent abundance. If you fear loneliness, you prevent real companionship. If you fear companionship, you prevent self-containment. So it goes on and on."

This is why "positive affirmations" and other meditations meant to bring abundance don't work for so many people. (It was also kind of left out of "The Secret" DVD and book that so many millions latched onto. The producers sort of neglected to mention that in order to use the Laws of Attraction positively, you first have to surface and clear out the negative beliefs and intentions hidden below the surface of consciousness.)

The Guide again:

"The great enemy is fear, and the best way to meet and conquer this enemy is first to ascertain, admit, and articulate it."

In other words, folks, don't have fear of your fears. See them, embrace them, then challenge their validity, and finally exhale them out of your life and make room for abundance.

Then, you can jump the shark, too.