Category: well-being

This is the third of three posts inspired by Sam’s Samwich post exploring the roots of her wedding planning anxieties. Find part one here.

Photo by RACOOL from Freerange Stock

I was trying to describe to Ben’s sister how all this wedding stuff feels gross to me because it’s all superficial, surface. It’s based on judgment and appearance. Those are places the real me doesn’t understand. She grows from within. The real me, even back in my awkward teen years, hated to be noticed for my outside, my body, my face, my height. Those are things that don’t belong to me. They are the vessel in which I inhabit, but that is all they are to me. They are the bread of the “Sam”wich. And yes, I love bread, and I’m grateful for bread, but without all the insides of a sandwich, bread is all you have. I feel like much more than what’s on the outside.–Intentionally Sam, “Samwich”

Superficiality Drains My Battery

The biggest reason I hate going to weddings is that I’m usually a friend or relative of the bride or the groom, will have a minute or two of interaction with one or both of them when they’re undergoing a great deal of stress, and spend the rest of my time making small talk with their friends and relatives (whom I’ve never met). If I can dredge up something we have in common to talk about, there will be a toast, or it’s time to cut the cake, or time to dance or do some other bullshit thing and that connection will be lost, in almost all cases, forever.

This is why, as an introvert, I find spending time with synthetic extended families (ones related by an interest) more fruitful than families related by DNA or friends of friends. I’m totally comfortable navigating a room full of strangers if we were drawn to that room through a genuine mutual interest.

How Are We Related?

You each know me through one of my synthetic extended families, so let me try to make some introductions, probably working from longest-standing relationships to newest, so that you can get to know each other on something other than a superficial level.

Waking Up Community at Leaven

I’m related to LaVeta and Jocelyn through a group that used to meet at Leaven Community for meditation, discussion, and snacks on Saturday mornings. Jocelyn and I started a Designing Your Life activity as a subgroup of that family and have continued our design projects (including this one) independently after we left the group and it eventually disbanded.

Intentionally Sam

I met Sam when she ran Cuddle Up to Me because I was curious about non-medication anxiety solutions that can serve as a stopgap until a mindfulness practice gives people some tools to regulate it on their own. Turns out hugs are great for this, but sometimes, in this society, difficult to come by.

Members of the Intentionally Sam Patreon now meet via Zoom on the first Tuesday of every month for a game night. I’m helping her edit her book, and we try to get together for regular walks where we vent about life, the universe, and everything.

Aaron and I also know each other through Intentionally Sam (don’t bet against him at Fibbage) and Aaron knows Jocelyn through a couple of our life design projects.

Monday Cluster

A flight attendant for Lufthansa introduced me to Laughter Yoga during a practice cuddle session. Since that is also a useful modality for rapid cortisol reduction, I attended a New Year’s Day Laughter Yoga party at Chris’s house. It seemed like the most awkward potential synthetic extended family function I could attend that weekend.

Chris and I met again through a Wednesday afternoon Zoom event called Connection Hour hosted by someone I met through a Rewriting Your Life prototype I ran at Cuddle Up to Me.

When the host switched to every other week, a break-off group met on alternate Wednesdays, then Tuesdays, now Mondays.

Michael later joined the Cluster.

Aaron sometimes Clusters with us.

Nurtured Nerds

Someone else I met through a practice cuddle session started up a Zoom meetup during Covid, and that’s where I met Alyssa and Davion. Alyssa was prototyping a group of her own called Nurtured Nerds to introduce socially isolated gamers to cuddling and other self care and Davion was on board as a key utility player from the start.

I’m not sure that the group has met its original objective, but each weekend, several of us get together to check in with each other and play Skribbl.

Secular Buddhism

Also during Covid (are you picking up on the fact that my synthetic extended family tree looks a lot like the Covid virus?)

Noah Rasheta, host of the Secular Buddhism podcast started a Sunday morning Zoom discussion group and later a Circle social media app.

I share posts related to deep woo-woo meditation and enlightenment there and Lorraine and Jennifer know me through that and my Zoom call gabbing.

It’s Your Turn

Now that you all know each other, if someone wants to host a party and invite everyone let me know.

I know it won’t be Sam because she’s got her hands full. And it won’t be me because I love crashing other people’s parties.

What else would you like members of this synthetic extended family to know about you?

I’ll share your answer in next week’s post.

“When a guy is told that ‘he’s acting like a dick’ it means his behavior is snarky, sarcastic, rude, caustic and/or just downright offensive.”–Quora

The first time we attended the Multnomah County Fair at Oaks Park, we checked out the Walk on the Wildside exhibit. A curious coatamundi noticed that if he climbed on top of his bucket he could poke at the sleeping baby tiger in the adjacent cage. He also, no doubt, realized that while the tiger could bat his paw down from his side, the cage was too narrow for him to retalliate. We witnessed this dick behavior as it happened, I snapped a picture, and it’s been the desktop image on my computer ever since.

“What is something that brought a smile to your face recently?” Jo asked at a recent “Gratitude, It’s Totally Possible, Kylego” event.

“Witnessing a baby calf being born,” someone answered.

As I thought of how to answer like a dick, a Surprise Guest Dick beat me to the punch. “What, did you grow another tiny leg?”

I thought, wait a second. It’s my job to be the dick here. But as the meeting continued, it was clear that this wasn’t just a one-off. It was as though the Surprise Guest Dick and I had swapped brains.

I later messaged them to find out how it felt to fill that role. Maybe I could get to the bottom of the question, “Why is it so much fun being a dick?”

Studies Show…

I think it pays to be a dick when it comes to psychology. I mean…here is a “science” whose findings are based on the study of the psyche, which means the soul, mind, or spirit, none of which have been proven to exist.

“You’re using semantics!” a member of our Monday Cluster group will argue whenever I raise this objection.

“I know!” I reply, “That is literally what we do here!”

Keeping in mind that the psychology loophole is big enough to drive a universe through, the HelpGuide.org article lists “The Benefits of Play for Adults” (aka being a dick) as follows: relieves stress, improves brain function, stimulates the mind and boosts creativity, improves relationships and connection to others, and keeps you feeling young and energetic.   

Relieves Stress

At our January Designing Your Life meeting, Jocelyn was planning an extended trip with her husband. She will be working remotely for the next couple of months and will subsequently be missing some things happening in town. She wrote down in her planning notebook that she felt guilty about not being here for a few of them.

I suggested, “Cross out guilty and write in ashamed.”

She looked puzzled. “I don’t think that I’m a bad person because I’m not doing them.”

“Then why waste the energy feeling guilty?”

She laughed. Stress relieved.

Improves Brain Function

SURPRISE GUEST DICK: I just had a number of things coming to mind that I found funny…I don’t think everyone else did.

An old college acquaintance posted a picture to commemorate his son Isaac’s 30^th birthday on Facebook. It showed two men I’d never met, presumably Isaac and his 90-plus-year-old grandfather. It took every ounce of restraint I had not to post the comment, “Which one is Isaac?”

Being a dick on Facebook is super high risk for backfiring, but mentally coming up with smart-ass comebacks to platitudes and banal crap is like taking my brain to the gym.

Stimulates the Mind and Boosts Creativity

Every other Monday I volunteer to take a one-to-two-minute rodeo ride at Portland Toastmasters called Table Topics. Someone asks me a lame question and it’s my job to turn it into an impromptu speech.

“What would you do to spice up a carousel ride at an amusement park?”

I was totally in the moment, so I don’t remember exactly what I said, but some elements were:

• Have two rows of horses heading in opposing directions.

• Hand lances out to all riders so they can try to knock each other off.

• When riders get knocked off their horses, they have to crawl to the central revolving platform, where they’re given real swords to fight to the death.

I know not everyone thought it was funny, but the speeches that followed mine were definitely more creative than the ones that preceded it.

Improves Relationships and Connection to Others

We were in the middle of taking three centering breaths at the beginning of our weekly Secular Buddhism Zoom call when a regular attendee popped in and said, “Hi, everybody!”

She was met with total silence. The regular host would have said something to make the moment less awkward for her, but since I was pinch-hitting, I said, “We didn’t say ‘hi’ back because we were all trying to do our centering breaths when you interrupted us.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, with mock contrition.

“It’s okay, but now you have to ask if anyone’s here for the first time to get things back on track.”

She laughed and played along with the joke.

The next day in our group’s Circle app, a newcomer to the Zoom calls who was taking a solemn approach to his practice posted, “Great call, Bruce. My wife loves your laugh by the way.”

Keeps You Feeling Young and Energetic

SURPRISE GUEST DICK: It was beautiful to witness different energy in flow. And to observe how ‘alive’ and ‘vibrant’ I feel when fully topped up by love, feeling appreciated and valued.

The podcast I’ve listened to the longest is Filmspotting. It features a segment called Massacre Theater where the hosts re-enact a scene from a classic or not-so-classic film and listeners write in if they know what film was massacred. A guiding principle of that podcast is, “We take the movies seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously.”

This approach often leads to dick-like lines like, “The Oscar category is best acting, not most acting.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but you’re completely wrong.”

“She’s not an actress, she’s an age-appropriate dialogue delivery device.”

Childish? Check. Energetic? Check.    

When was the last time you acted like a dick?

How fun was it?

I’ll share your response in next week’s post.

This is the third of three posts reporting findings from a two-day Goenka-schedule mini-retreat I retroactively titled, “Kobayashi Maru.” Find first post here.

“In older operating systems with cooperative multitasking, infinite loops normally caused the entire system to become unresponsive. With the now-prevalent preemptive multitasking model, infinite loops usually cause the program to consume all available processor time, but can usually be terminated by a user.”–Wikipedia

Photo by WOSUNAN from Freerange Stock

So far on this retreat, I practiced no-self-inquiry by asking what am I trying to control that I can’t control?

This sent me into an infinite loop.

If I hadn’t done the non-duality work, it would have crashed my system. But since I have, I was able to ask what can you do when all your tools and coping mechanisms fail you?

The answer Kobayashi Maru allowed me to terminate the infinite loop and arrive at the solution of reprogramming the simulation or asking a different question.

The only coping mechanism necessary for trying to control things I can’t control is compassion. As long as I’m trying to control things I can’t control, I require coping mechanisms. When those coping systems fail, it’s a no-win situation.

What if I accept that there’s nothing I can control?

During a Secular Buddhism Podcast Zoom call I was guest facilitating, community member Laura asked, “How do we balance the seeming paradox between being present in the current moment and getting things done (intention/goals)?”

Before wrapping up the call someone thanked me for facilitating, suggesting that it wasn’t easy. I replied that all I did was set my goal to make it to the end of the call and then paid attention moment by moment until it was over.

Even if I’m never in control of anything that happens, I can’t help responding moment by moment. I responded to my own coping question with a scenario from a movie I saw over forty years ago. I responded to the reprogram the simulation analogy by remembering a Ten Percent Happier podcast conversation between Dan Harris and Daniel M. Ingram, entitled “Is Enlightenment Possible for Real People.”

Here’s an edited version of Ingram’s description of awake awareness.

Rather than there being the sense of a controller, now there’s just the sense of intentions arising naturally, like the rest of the world unfolding naturally, and then actions arising naturally from those intentions. So there’s a sense of naturalness or causality without the sense that there’s something separate or independent from that that’s controlling. Weirdly enough, people think, “Oh, I don’t want to lose control.” Actually, you never had control because the sense of self in this case is an illusion. So, removing that illusion doesn’t change function. In fact, it upgrades function because there’s no confusion about there being something that didn’t exist. So it’s an upgrade. It’s better.

Why is it better?

There’s this sense that most people have that they’re this poor linear thing that’s trying to control things, to do things, to be things, to know things, to make decisions, to navigate in this world. And that is an inherently painful illusion because the only thing that we have in experience to base a self on is all this changing stuff. And it turns out that the process of trying to create a stable sense of self out of an intrinsically incredibly unstable experience is kind of like a virus on your computer. Trying to make permanent things that are not permanent is an arduous task and one doomed to failure. That’s painful.

The mind laboring under the false illusion that there is this knower-doer-watcher-controller somewhere in the center of things then relating to these things causes additional suffering. It’s like a headache you didn’t even know you had.

In what ways is it better?

People eat a tasty meal and they might notice the first bite or two are tasty, and then after that they’re thinking about the meal or are distracted, they’re not enjoying the nice meal. Most of the money you spent on the meal is wasted because your attention was not there.

When you stub your toe, the actual sensation is limited in space. Then there’s this whole funny thing of the internal mind trying to shut off sensations of the toe because it imagines it’s the experiencer. It’s trying to literally get the head away from the sensations when these are just some more sensations up here and those are just sensations in your toe. And long after the sensations go away there may be something in the head remembering it. The sensations of the toe could just be the sensations of the toe known by themselves where they were, no bigger or smaller or more intense, without all the complicated elaboration.

How do I get here?  

Insight practices are like an antivirus program that clears things out and resets the system so it can just experience things where they are naturally. You don’t have to get the sense that you’re processing everything through this limited central system thing.

Is this worth pursuing?

I wouldn’t trade this for anything except world peace, and then I would do it reluctantly.

Where do I go from here?

I remember a story that Tara Brach and many others have shared.

In colonial times, the British built golf courses in India to offer them the same recreation as back home. But they did not foresee the monkey problem. Monkeys loved to take the balls and run off with them. They tried all sorts of things to keep the monkeys from taking the golf balls – including building tall fences, luring them away, cutting back the jungle, trapping them (the list is long), etc. As time went on and they had tried dozens of cures, they finally concluded that there was nothing to be done to keep the monkeys from the golf courses.

So instead, they made a new rule for British golf courses (for in India only, of course): You must play the ball where the monkey drops it.

When I sense that I’m draining all my processing power by attributing an action to the illusion of control, maybe I can terminate the infinite loop by declaring a “Monkey Drop!” and continue responding as usual.

Was there a time you had to upgrade your operating (belief) system to accommodate the facts on the ground?

What happened?

I’ll share your response in next week’s post.

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This is the second of three posts reporting findings from a two-day Goenka-schedule mini-retreat I retroactively titled, “Kobayashi Maru.” Find first post here.

The Rinzai school of Zen uses koans, questions that can’t be answered through rational thought. What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is your original face before you were born? How, as a Starfleet Commander, will you negotiate the Kobayashi Maru?

YOU: Captain’s log, stardate 8130.3. Starship Enterprise on training mission to Gamma Hydra, Section fourteen, coordinates twenty-two eighty-seven four. Approaching Neutral Zone, all systems normal and functioning.

SULU: Leaving Section Fourteen for Section Fifteen.

YOU: Stand by. Project parabolic course to avoid entering Neutral Zone.

SULU: Aye, Captain. Course change projected.

UHURA: Captain, I’m getting something on the distress channel.

YOU: On speakers!

KOBAYASHI MARU VOICE: Imperative! This is the Kobayashi Maru, nineteen periods out of Altair Six. We have struck a gravitic mine and have lost all power. Our hull is penetrated and we have sustained many casualties (static).

UHURA: This is the Starship Enterprise. Your message is breaking up. Can you give your coordinates? Repeat. This is the Starship…

KOBAYASHI MARU VOICE: Enterprise, our position is Gamma Hydra, Section Ten.

YOU: In the Neutral Zone.

KOBAYASHI MARU VOICE: Hull penetrated, life support systems failing. Can you assist us, Enterprise? Can you assist us?

YOU: Data on Kobayashi Maru!

COMPUTER VOICE: Subject vessel is third class neutronic fuel carrier, crew of eighty-one, three hundred passengers.

YOU: Damn. Mister Sulu, plot an intercept course.

SULU: May I remind the Captain that if a starship enters the Zone.

YOU: I’m aware of my responsibilities, Mister.

SULU: Estimating two minutes to intercept. Now entering the Neutral Zone.

COMPUTER VOICE: Warning. We have entered the Neutral Zone. Warning.

SPOCK: We are now in violation of Treaty, Captain.

YOU: Stand by transporter room, ready to beam survivors aboard.

UHURA: Captain, I’ve lost their signal!

COMPUTER VOICE: Alert! Sensors indicate three Klingon Cruisers, bearing three one six, mark four, closing fast.

YOU: Visual! Battle stations! Activate shields!

SULU: Shields activated!

YOU: Inform the Klingons we are on a rescue mission.

UHURA: They’re jamming all the frequencies, Captain.

COMPUTER VOICE: Klingons on attack course and closing.

YOU: We’re over our heads. Mister Sulu, get us out of here.

SULU: I’ll try, Captain.

COMPUTER VOICE: Alert! Klingon torpedoes activated.

YOU: Evasive action!

AN EXPLOSION ROCKS THE BRIDGE KNOCKING SULU UNCONSCIOUS.

YOU: Engineering! Damage report!

VOICE OF SCOTT: Main energizer hit, Captain!

YOU: Engage auxiliary power. Prepare to return fire!

ANOTHER EXPLOSION ROCKS THE BRIDGE. McCOY IS KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS WHILE TENDING SULU.

CADET: Shields collapsing, Captain!

YOU: Fire all phasers!

SPOCK: No power to the weapons, Captain.

YET ANOTHER EXPLOSION ROCKS THE BRIDGE. SPOCK IS OUT.

VOICE OF SCOTT: Captain, it’s no use. We’re dead in space.

UHURA IS ALSO UNCONSCIOUS.

YOU: Activate escape pods. Send out the Log Buoy. …All hands abandon ship. Repeat, all hands abandon ship.

Luckily, it was all just a simulation. Your Admiral Kirk returns to order clean-up after the simulation, but offers no advice on your performance.

YOU: Any suggestions, Admiral?

KIRK: Prayer, Lieutenant. The Klingons don’t take prisoners.

YOU: Permission to speak candidly, sir?

KIRK: Granted.

YOU: I don’t believe this was a fair test of my command abilities.

KIRK: And why not?

YOU: Because there was no way to win.

KIRK: A no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face. Has that never occurred to you?

YOU: No, sir. It has not.

KIRK: How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say?

YOU: As I indicated, Admiral, that thought had not occurred to me.

KIRK: Well, now you have something new to think about. Carry on.

I am not a fan of Rinzai Zen. Coming back to a Zen master time and time again with a solution and being told time and time again to try again isn’t a style of pedagogy that agrees with me. The answers Kirk gives, Prayer, Lieutenant. The Klingons don’t take prisoners, and Now you have something to think about. Carry on, are dismissive.

I was practicing no-self-inquiry with a question. What can you do when all your tools and coping mechanisms fail you? The opening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came back loud and clear. Now I had to parse what that meant.

I learned from last year’s non-duality retreat that trying to control things I can’t control is a no-win situation best met with compassion. I learned to cultivate that compassion not just for myself but for others who were struggling with the same challenge.

There was another solution embedded in the screenplay for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

YOU: Sir, may I ask you a question?

KIRK: What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?

YOU: The Kobayashi Maru test, sir, will you tell me what you did? I would really like to know.

McCOY: Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario.

YOU: How?

KIRK: I reprogrammed the simulation so it was possible to rescue the ship.

YOU: What?

DAVID: He cheated!

KIRK: I changed the conditions of the test. I got a commendation for original thinking. I don’t like to lose.

YOU: Then you never faced that situation, faced death.

KIRK: I don’t believe in a no-win scenario.

If trying to control things we can’t control is the source of all our suffering, and we can’t control anything because everything in our experience is subject to dependent arising, how might I reprogram the simulation so that it’s no longer no-win?

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