Manifesting Thoughts

I sit here in my home office on a cold December night and I think about the significance of this moment in thought as well as the monumental responsibility for it if in fact “energy follows thought” as some disciplines espouse.

Energy follows thought means ultimately all thought is creative or creating and continues once the thinker abandons it. If intention is the yeast then that energy component has the potential to manifest into a creation on the canvas of time.

This kind of thinking gets a little convoluted in its possible consequences, but you get the principle of the idea. OK it’s a little weird too.

The idea is that once you think about something, what if that thought bounds around the universe bumping into and attracting like thought patterns that end up in a mish-mash junk yard of collective possibilities? Hopefully the thought trash heap is somewhere at the edge of the universe and away from any disorder the original thought could have created. It may be out of the way, but it’s still there. Darn…some think this could happen.

I have no idea whether it could or could not happen, but I don’t want to take any chances with any errant or ill-conceived thoughts hanging out with other like-minded energy guys down at the corner of space, so what do I do?

I have been told of two antidotes. One is all you have to do is say “cancel” and the thought energy dissipates and two you can offer a prayer thought, the non-denominational variety, that basically says, “I release into the light any negativity created by my thought and ask that it be transformed into a useful energy for the good of the whole.”

These are just a few of the mystical mental wanderings that come on cold night when a mesmerizing fire frees thoughts from the “what if” file in the back of my mind.

I’ll try to be more practical tomorrow. I’m off now to dream of Leprechauns and UFO’s.

Pearl Harbor Addendum

Some thoughts today on yesterday’s 67th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

There was a time, over dinner many years ago, that an older friend of mine, a retired naval officer, a graduate of Annapolis and now a successful businessman wanted to talk to one of my sons about attending Annapolis. My friend apparently had both political and military connections and my son had grades sufficient for an application and appointment.

My friend was a good man, a survivor of Pearl Harbor, but he had a powerful hatred for the Japanese. He hated them so much that he took every opportunity in business, in public, and in private to say so. He was a big time successful contractor who built office and factory buildings, but he used no products from Japan.

During our dinner conversation I told him, I hoped he would understand, but he could not talk to my son, unless he could let go of his long-standing hatred of the Japanese. I didn’t want a seventeen year old influenced by such a long festering hate.

When you hate you create a bond as powerful as love and it won’t release you from your pain until you consciously let it go. The great teachings of the world suggest that hatred will eventually destroy the hater.

My friend apparently thought about our discussion for several weeks. One day he called to tell me he was going to visit Pearl Harbor…on his way to Japan.

He asked, when he got back could talk to my son. I said “yes”.

As an afterword, my son was not interested in a naval career and went on to be successful in another venue and my friend was able to release a constricting hatred that held him in a cocoon of anger for decades.

As it is with so many acquaintances with which we are blessed in life, I have lost track of my friend and hope that if he is still alive, he passed yesterday’s anniversary of the attack with a peace that only forgiveness can engender.

Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my granddaughter’s birthday and tomorrow is mine. One of us is eight and the other sixty-seven. No hints.

I did get to thinking about the difference in life perception from an eight year old to me. There are a lot of experiential years in between that provide a knowing look on the condition of human kind and there is a lot of youthful wonderment in eight years of existence that I have forgotten and should probably embrace for a gestalt understanding of life and times.

When I was eight television was just coming into the home. My TV-programs were on only three channels. CBS, NBC and Dumont. ABC had not yet been formed into the third national network.

At first, I watched TV at a neighbor’s home since we didn’t get one until later. We kids (I can’t even remember my young friends names) watched Howdy Doody, Gabby Hayes, Captain Video and Tom Corbett Space Cadet. They were generally fifteen-minute programs starting around five in the evening.

After we got a television a year or so later, I remember my Mother coming home from teaching elementary school and while preparing dinner Kate Smith could be heard in the living room singing her theme song, “When the moon comes over the mountain”.

My granddaughter’s TV choices are over six hundred channels. I imagine her birthday thoughts are just as profound as mine. Her gifts were a few electronic games and books and goodies from classmates, parents, cousins and grandparents. Her year will linger long in merriment for she has only lived one-eighth of her life.

Tomorrow I will get a few birthday wishes and calls, a couple of cards and a gift and a hug from my wife, but the day will pass quickly as they all do in one’s sixty-seventh year.

I’ll try to talk to my granddaughter about serious things a little more this year. Where do puppies get all their energy? When you imagine things where does it come from and can you stop thinking if you wanted too? How come candy tastes better than green beans?

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once wrote that it’s good for the young and old to be together. The child then is able to acknowledge the elder in herself and the elder is able to acknowledge the child in himself and a new agreement is formed between generations. I like that.

Heroes and Stars

With Plaxico Burress of the New York Giants football team in the news my thoughts are on the greatness and failings of our heroes and stars.

We revere the greatness that comes from our sports stars or any celebrity we deem to hold high. We admire their talent, their accomplishment, their beauty or their potential. We appreciate their team or individual success. It inspires the individual in us to be better by practicing more, getting better grades, respecting our bodies, or extending a kindness to someone. When our heroes and stars have public failings it forces us to privately acknowledge our own.

When heroes fall and falter, the tendency is to focus only on the disappointment and not on the whole person. Mickey Mantle’s addiction to alcohol, for instance, while bad, both for him and as an example to young athletes, did not minimize his 536 career home runs.

OJ Simpson seems to be a case all by himself, but he is still included in the category of sports stars gone bad or celebrities who make bad choices. Michael Vick is another, as are Jayson Williams and Mike Tyson. And let’s not forget the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska or the choices of President Richard Nixon.

Burress’s choice to carry a gun into a New York City nightclub and then shoot himself with it, however accidentally, still makes him subject to the consequences of carrying a loaded gun in New York City. If convicted that's three and a half years in jail. He basically has thrown away a 35 million dollar career.

Heroes and celebrities come in both genders and attain all degrees of fame and status. Parents, teachers, clergy, and politicians can be heroes and some will inevitably disappoint the admirer or the fan.

Human frailty is universal. Greatness comes when we learn from it.

Silence

I want to share with you some places that may not be of your choice or current experience. They are based solely on my interests and abilities and availability. To me they are profound.

These are places of extreme quiet, where silence and nothing are one and you cannot tell them apart. Places where only nature speaks and her sound is deafening when no other audible intrusion is near.

One place is on a silent river. Where portions neither ripple nor descend through noisy cataracts, but carry liquid volumes in the stillness of deep flows and where it is far enough away from man’s concoctions that the only thing you think you hear are your own thoughts, but they aren’t.

If you’ve never been to such a place and find yourself in it, there will come wonderment, a revelation, a spiritual attunement, a surprise appreciation of the empathetic knowledge that only stillness engenders in a singular moment of time.

The first time I found such silence was on the Green River in Utah as I rafted in a quiet eddy pool and found myself in involuntary prayer with nature whose sacristy I entered and then sustained by the choice of benevolent thought.

The second time was at night alone at the edge of a lake in the Allagash wilderness of Maine. The stars have a noticeable brilliance when civilization is far away. They also have a sound that man rarely hears for we occupy a space of things and doing in the Cosmos of life.

The third I experience numerous times for I live nearby. It is on the Wallkill River in New York. When my Kayak drifts on the silent surface I embrace the Oneness and silence of All That Is.

I know that science has learned much from the music of the spheres in the vast cacophony of the heavens. I know that religions promote silence to reach the unreachable. I know that the frigid stillness of winter creates a cocoon where sound will not enter because of density.

What I didn’t know until I experienced it was the joy that silence gives the listener and that robust laughter needs no sound and God needs no dogma. The thoughts you think are yours, but aren’t, are God’s. He talks to all of us in stillness.

Mother Kills Children

Sometimes a story grabs your attention and pulls you into a sadness and anger that you cannot shake or dismiss.

The death of three children in Colorado Springs, Colorado is one of them.

Maybe you’ve heard the story by now. A 40-year old Mother was found guilty of first-degree murder killing her three children by burning down her home for the insurance money.

The children were eleven, five and three.

Deborah Nicholls will be sentenced tomorrow and faces life in prison without parole.

The law will decide her fate, but what of the children?

I want to believe that there is a place of cuddling comfort and dancing peaceful wonder. A place where toys and crayons never break, and scratches, cuts and bumps do not exist.

A place where teddy bears talk in happy colors, and puppies always wait to play. A place where candy is for breakfast and presents fill the room. Where no one knows what fear is and no shadows hide in halls.

I want to believe that in this special place, every mother who ever lived and loved her children, is waiting with open arms to hug, to love and comfort these children forever.

I want to believe it, for when I do, anger and judgment fade and sadness takes its’ rightful place and I can cry without the hope of vengeance.

Who Am I

Every once in awhile we should ask ourselves, Why am I me?

I often ask myself this question and with every asking there comes a different answer based upon my experience and growth at that moment of asking.

Why am I me? An answer for me is to participate in this time and space, in this place with infinite choices and live in the moment with the nearly six billion souls who have come to experience life together and generally be an example of creative change, courage and noble character.

In each generation, perhaps in each lifetime, special souls are born to help us find, accomplish, complete, and create new paths to the Source that give understandable meaning, knowledge and elegant grace to life.

Sometimes those souls will manifest in science and philosophy – Einstein and Epictetus; sometimes in literature – Dostoevsky and Miller; sometimes in leadership – Churchill and Lincoln; sometimes in music –Beethoven and Berlin; or art and architecture – Michelangelo and Wright and sometimes in belief systems: Moses, Christ, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, Krishna, Gandhi, and thousands of others like them who taught by example that the way to The Source was through positive deeds of choice and unconditional love.

If we look at history we find greatness and charismatic leadership in all fields of creative endeavor. We can go to any country in ancient or modern times and find individual greatness that influenced nationalistic culture and global history and we can find individual dictatorial greed and cruelty. In some spiritual disciplines they call the latter, "misdirected good."

The Balinese of Indonesia have a perfect saying: “Bhuta ia, dewa ia”, Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to understand “Why am I me” if we don’t consider our innate connection to everyone else, who they are and what they need. It is a difficult thing to do with the billions of people on earth, but if you fit the entire population of the world into a village consisting of only 100 people, maintaining the proportions of all the people living on Earth, six people would possess 59% of the wealth and they would all come from the USA.

80 would live in poverty
70 would be illiterate
50 would suffer from hunger and malnutrition
1 would be dying
1 would be being born
1 would own a computer and one would have a university degree.

If you’ve never experienced the plague of war, the degradation of prison, the pain of torture, were never close to death from hunger, then you are better off than 500 million people.
If you can worship without the fear that someone will assault or kill you, then you are more fortunate than 3 billion people.

If you have plenty of food, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are wealthier than 75% of the other 99 people.

If you currently have money in the bank, in your wallet and a few coins in your pocket, you are one of 8 of the privileged few amongst the 100 people in your condensed world.

“Why am I me?” begs different questions. "Why am I so fortunate and what do I need to learn from the experience?" It makes you think doesn’t it?