The Sunday Morning Muse, May 6, 2012

Sunday morning is shining through the window as I finish up my second cup of coffee. A woodpecker for some reason is pounding away at the gutter above my window, and although it is amusing to the cat, I must put an end to it. (Pause, hit window, gone)

I'm reading a book called "Suddenly Psychic." It is not what I thought it would be. It was in a bunch of old books my sister was donating to the Salvation Army. Since I'm short of reading material lately, (still re-reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, a nice manual on Trigger Point Therapy, and Wayne Dyer's Wisdom of the Ages), I thought I'd just flip through it while I drank a beer in the sun and take a break. Light reading, as you will.

This wasn't light reading. It was scientific approach to things like getting to the alpha state through the Hemi-Sync method, remote viewing and even remote healing. This is where it got kind of far out to me, when the author attempted to remote heal her cat's kidney problems by imagining herself filtering the cat's blood. (Since I know you will never read this book, I'll give you the spoiler. The little cat wasn't healed, but he did fare pretty well in his last few months. (He was only given days to live when her therapy with him began.)

I'd be the first to admit I'm in awe of the brain and any potential unleashed power that lies within. Science unravels more and more secrets of the brain all the time as we understand how memory works, what parts of the brain affect our senses, emotions, and even how people use their brain to defy pain or reprogram their "wiring" after severe injuries to gain back some of their losses.

Brain function versus mind function are two separate things though. The idea of consciousness. I feel certain that Sweet Pea is conscious, but I don't know if she has a conscience. She steals Sambo's food and I don't think she feels the least bit guilty about it.

To End All Wars

The day I got this book in the mail was the same day I heard the author on Fresh Air talking about it. I know it seems strange I'm reading about World War I. Not the summer hot romance book or anything about vampires.

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But I was reading about Haller's Army on the internet, and thinking about how my grandfather left America to go back home and fight in the war for the sake of his homeland, Poland, and I realized I didn't know all that much about the war. I think now he was gone about 3 years. I found the ship he came back on in 1920. The government commissioned the ship to bring them back home, and according to some accounts I have read, the men had to "wait it out' a long time

to get home after the war was over. I'm glad he made it back and met my grandmother. The men were given the choice to stay in Poland...but Poland wasn't the same, they said. So much was lost in the war. An epic scale of human deaths, devastated land, and loss.

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This book is different than a lot of books on the war, because it gives light to those who opposed the war at the time and some their stories as well as others who faught in it and held deep convictions in favor of it.

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To tell the truth, the interview on Fresh Air was easier for me to understand than the book. Not that it's the author's fault. I think I need a primer on the basics, so I have some context in which to read the stories the man has researched.

A New Earth- Eckhart Tolle

I am re-reading A New Earth, and to my astonishment, I'm really getting it this time. (When the student is ready... the teacher appears...)

Anyhow, the story of the duck resonated with me. Isn't it soooo true? Shaking off the negative (and all those emotions that well up inside) and simply moving on with your life. Not carrying around all that negativity and replaying it over and over again. Making the people around you miserable as well. It's all ego stuff. I am becoming so much aware of Ego centered behaviors and the unhappy consequences of them. It is difficult to beat the ego back at times, but it all starts with awareness. Some people never get past even that stage, the awareness that you, inside, are not these negative thoughts. You are the person who is thinking them again and again. And you can change your thoughts.

Can you look past "being right" (making someone else wrong) and choose something different instead? Like getting on with the next moment in your life?

On the Couch

As a huge fan of the Sopranos, I couldn't wait to dive into this book. I wasn't disappointed. First, let me say what this book is NOT. It is not a gossipy, name dropping tell-all of her glamorous, movie star life. Instead it is a memoir that is refreshingly candid, revealing intimate details of her family life, her career, her loves, and her bout with depression.

As it read it, I kept thinking, wow, if I wrote a memoir of my own life could I even go that deep? Reveal that much? At times I feel like a voyeur reading her journal. Reading about her custody battle over her daughter Stella was gut-wrenching. I felt like I was on a seesaw with her... one day up...next day down, wondering how could it get worse? And then seeing it happen.

And through it all, she seeks to work through her mistakes and keep going.

Yes, there are a few good "Sopranos" stories and insights. Like how she was first offered the part of Carmela, and why she turned it down. What it was like to be Tony's psychiatrist, and other little tidbits that fans will like.

It is one of those books where, when you turn the last page, you feel sad because you lost a friend. There is a consolation prize. In the back she serves up a list six "lessons from the couch." The list offers sound advice for anyone--- not just those suffering depression.

You can hear an archived interview with Lorraine Bracco about the book at NPR.

A New Earth- Eckhart Tolle

Let me first say this is not a book that you just read straight through and expect to grasp it all as you would a light fiction novel. I struggled through the first half of the book and then I got about midway and that's when it began to speak to me. Mind you, it is not a lot of new ground for someone familiar with books of similiar themes... for example--controlling the ego, or living in the present moment. There are some practical suggestions in the book.... and it is worth using it as a guide or at least a reminder to stop and let the world unfold as it is, and quit hallucinating through your life... living for some future that may never happen, or waddle in past mistakes, that keep you from living in the NOW.
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I learned something from this book. I learned that we don't see a lot of things as they really are because our own thoughts about them get in the way. Familiarity with something makes it worse. In the book the author says some people feel more alive when they visit foreign countries... because their senses heighten. PERCEPTION takes up more of their consciousness than their thinking.
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I'll buy that. We all think too much. We all "label" too much. The point is... it causes great suffering and misunderstanding. And I say it leads to a great deal of miscommunication...and to an unauthentic experience. A made up in your head way of looking at the world, instead of seeing it... or seeing someone .... for who they really are inside: A soul with a common purpose.
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True communication with one another... the bonding that you feel instantly,without words, the joy that you feel when you are understood-- there is no need to label it or to try to understand it. To me that joy is a great starting point for peace.

I also liked the part about bringing joy Into what you do...don't expect to get joy OUT of what you do. And if you can't bring joy into it... move on. Do something else.
As Pollyanna as that sounds there is a lot of sense in it.

Finally, for someone looking for their life's purpose... the book offers an interesting perspective that made me look at my own purpose in a different light.

By Chance, I'm Ordering This Book

I heard a great interview last night on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. Author Leonard Mlodinow was on the show talking about The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives-- a book that came out this week. The point in the show when I tuned in, he was telling George how Roger Maris' record homerun season was probably just lucky. Knowing very little about baseball, I almost turned the dial, and I'm glad I didn't. The author launched into a very interesting... intelligent and just funny explanation -- using statistics--about how sometimes average players get lucky. A lot of what happens to us in life has to do with random chance.

( from Amazon.com)

“A wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness
affect our lives.”--Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time

If you go to the website, you can read an exerpt from the book. It makes you think about the sheer acts of chance that put you where you are right now. Some people say there are no coinsedences. I have to think about that.

And Now... Something Completely Different

Okay, I'll admit it. I love golf. And... way back when, I listened to Alice Cooper. Even read his biography, called Me, Alice.

oh oh. I just checked Amazon....that old book --- from 1976, mind you, is worth 300 frigging dollars.... USED. Now... where is it? Did I loan it to someone in college? Take it back to the Library? ...... I digress. 300 bucks.

Onward....so who could go wrong buying his new book? It's called Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: My Twelve Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict .

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UPDATE! 9/15/07

I mistakenly ordered the Audio CD of Alice Cooper reading the book. What a nice mistake! It 's proven to be a very enjoyable book... I love it. He talks about his life, drops enough names from Rock and Roll, and also in golf, to keep it interesting. It's relatable. Golfers out there, you can't help but like the guy. Who wouldn't want to take chipping lessons from John Daly? Music afficionados will be sure to find an anecdote or two that will give you a peak into the life of a rock star. The good, the bad, and how skinny little Vincent Furnier became Alice Cooper.

Reading is... well, Fundamental

Got that bestseller on your nightstand--- half finished? Uncle John's Bathroom reader by your throne? Stephen King stashed by the couch? You are a dying breed, my friends. I read another depressing study last week that revealed, to no one's suprize, that one in four adults read no books at all last year. The people who do read are older people and women.

Anyhow, today I'm starting Wayne Dyer's new book on the Tao Te Ching, called Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. I caught him on PBS last weekend and got interested in learning more about the Tao, a book that's been on my shelf basically unread since I got it in college. Dr. Dyer meditated on the verses in the Tao, and attempted to relate its message in the context of modern times.

I've read most of Dr. Dyer's books. My favorite is Your Erroneous Zones. In there he talked about Guilt and Worry. Two completely useless emotions. Spending your time feeling guilty about anything will not change the past, and sitting there worrying about the future only wastes your living moments right now. It will alter nothing in the future. Only action-- taken right now in the present can do that.


The change your thoughts, change your life mantra is no new territory for Dr. Dyer. He said all along that you become what you think about. Imagine yourself in the situation you want to be in and live as if it is already there. It makes sense to me. If you want to be thin, imagine yourself as thin and behave as a thin person does. Exercise, eat right, pass on the dessert--- do that every day.... and one morning you will wake up and be thin! Of course, it won't be tomorrow. But, as trite as it sounds, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.


You see, all this is pretty elementary. We all just need to contemplate more.

It is a dying art.

Now, pass those potato chips.

Naahhh, forget it. I'm contemplating thin-ness.

( I know... good luck with that.)