Do we value life too much?

My cat Buddy, always an indoor cat, recently discovered the wonder of his own feline power:  He can break through window screens and escape to enjoy the great outdoors. He did it twice this week. My response (thus far) has been to make sure any window is open just a crack. His response in turn, has been to let me know he regards me as a jailer, or at the very least, as a bad parent, meowing and clawing at the window panes intermittently throughout the day.

Not that I’d ever anthropomorphize, but our conversation the last few days has been something like this:

Buddy: Hey Dad, I want to go out, OK?

Me: No, it’s not okay.  You’re an indoor cat. You’re staying here with me.

Buddy: C’mon, Dad! I’ve already shown you I’m responsible. I don’t go too far away, and I always come back home.

Me: I understand and appreciate that. But it’s because I love you. You’re my little Buddy-cat, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.

Buddy: You should talk! You leave home every day!  Sometimes several times!

Me: That’s different. I’m a human being. I have to go to work to make the money to pay for things like our apartment and your cat food. But you’re a cat. Outdoor cats generally die much younger than indoor cats. And they’re more likely to get hurt in fights with dogs and other cats, and to have problems with fleas, parasites, and illnesses.

Buddy: But I can take care of myself!  Remember when I ate the cockroach? I didn’t get sick at all! And I practice martial arts every day with Talbot.  Sometimes I even beat him and he’s almost twice my size!

Me: Are your claws going to save you from the 18-wheelers on Hampton Blvd.?

Buddy: Do you think I’m stupid? There’s nothing on the other side of Hampton worth checking out anyway.

Me: So you’re not missing much if you stay here with Talbot and me.

Buddy: Yes I am! Freedom! Walking in the grass, on the sidewalk! Chasing birds, and hearing their songs so much clearer! Scratching trees instead of your mattress! Breathing fresh air! Sunbathing on the lawn! It feels so good! And I don’t have to worry about missing the stupid tiny litterbox that you always forget to clean!

Me: No.

Buddy: But the cat next door goes out!

Me: If the cat next door jumped off a cliff, would you?

Buddy: I’m not stupid! Why don’t you trust me?

Me: It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just that it’s a mean world out there.

Buddy: Look, I can take care of myself.  I know what streets to cross and how to avoid traffic.  I can win or escape any fight. And that birth-control talk you gave me when you took me to the vet that time…

Me: I remember.

Buddy: Yeah, I remember, too, thanks for nothing!  Let’s just say the effects are still with me, and I won’t be getting any she-cats in trouble.  I’m old enough, I’ve got my shots, and my tags are RIGHT here!  C’mon, let me go out! Please!

Me: Buddy, I love you, but my answer’s still “no.”  C’mon, who wants a belly rub?

Buddy: I want to go out! I hate you!  You never care about what’s important to ME!

Actually that was the translation … we usually talk in Esperanto. But seriously, the reason I’m posting this is I’m beginning to see his POV. I was raised by over-protective parents, and I’m fully aware that over-parenting can be just as destructive as under-parenting. Is it better for a cat to live 15 -18 years pampered, fat and cramped, or maybe a few years less, but fully enjoying everything the world has to offer in the few blocks of his territory?

I wonder how this relates to other aspects of my life, and the world in general… I haven’t been skydiving yet. Maybe it’s time.  And maybe when I’m old and doctors are pressuring me for an iffy operation that might give me a “few more years” of a lesser quality, maybe I should say, “F-k you! I think I’d rather die in my own bed.” Everywhere, understandably humans try to extend life, and increase “security” as much as possible.  But nothing in the world guarantees or can guarantee long life or security. Does our drive for them stem partly, maybe even largely, from our insecurity?

I’m almost at the point of opening the door and telling him the feline Esperanto equivalent of “Okay, son, here are the keys… Don’t stay out too late.” What are your thoughts?

the (dis)appearance of God

It’s been more than two years since I had the experience that I call “the  suck” or “the empty  holodeck.” Although the experience really lasted just a moment, in some ways its consequences have been far lasting. Because of my own attachments, I’ve probably resisted describing it as honestly as I could have. 

What really changed most is that I no longer experience God as a felt Presence. This was jarring and unsettling to me, because for well over thirty years, I did. After a brief agnostic period in my youth, I had a born-again experience that left me incapable of doubt. I knew God was there, because I felt that Presence with me. I was never alone, and I knew it. It was like I had an invisible Companion who was always there.

I took me a long time to realize (in fact, it still amazes me) that most people, including most Christians and other religious people, don’t  have a continuous experience of Presence. As a consequence, for most, religious conviction is based on belief rather than a knowing based on lasting experience.

It would be an exaggeration to say that “God left.” However, for a short while, I felt utterly alone, and although it was jarring, it wasn’t entirely bad. For example, for the first time in my life, I felt like I had privacy!  And in addition, I was able to understand other people’s groping in the dark for a belief to give them a sense of the Ultimate, and I was even able to really understand the skeptics who dismissed it all out of hand.

I don’t want to go back, and earIier this year I even rejected the idea of returning to a previous view. Now I’m  beginning to realize what really happened was that I was blessed with a spiritual experience that lasted so long, I couldn’t even recognize it as an experience. Now it’s over, and I’m having a different spiritual experience. Everything changes, even experiences of the Changeless.

Keeps it interesting, nicht wahr?

 

Back from Montréal

I’ve just returned from a trip to Montréal for a joint conference of the United States’ and the Pan-American Esperanto associations. I had a wonderful time, and my only regret was that I had to leave early for travel and work considerations. It was a wonderful experience. In the year since I began seriously studying Esperanto, I still hadn’t met another Esperantist (they’re hard to come by in Norfolk!) and now I was completely immersed in Esperanto, surrounded by hundreds of speakers, mostly fluent, from not only the whole Western hemisphere, but from as far away as Japan.

The whole experience was a blast. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a great desire to travel, and other cultures, languages, and belief systems have always fascinated me.  Here I was having “three-language” days, speaking with the other attendees in Esperanto and with the locals in French and English. (I tried to use French as much as possible, and to switch to English only when necessary—it usually was … my French is very limited).

Although some of the presenters were sometimes challenging for me to understand, it was mostly because of their poor public speaking abilities rather than a matter of language itself. In conversations, I could understand everyone almost perfectly for the duration (with one notable exception!) and I only “crocodiled” for a very few, short instances (krokodili is Esperanto slang for speaking your native language with with other Esperantists). Ninety-nine percent of the time I spoke and listened in Esperanto, and I now feel I can truly consider myself a bilingual person.

Esperantists often speak about the “internal idea” (interna ideo) of their language. The entire reason for the existence of the language is for people of all cultures to have common access to an extremely powerful, descriptive, and fairly easily-learned means of communication, that belongs to no one culture or country and so, puts none at a disadvantage. Somewhat ironically, the desire of a planned “universal” language is to protect linguistic and cultural diversity. The conference exemplified the internal idea quite well, as its theme was diversity and sustainability regarding ecosystems, languages, and cultures.

The “internal idea” has other names outside of the context of Esperanto: love, compassion, tolerance. Interestingly, the more we realize universal truths, such as the fact that everyone of us is simply embodied Spirit, just as every other one is, the more we can appreciate the uniqueness of every wonderful soul.

Announcing RockOm.net

(Time for absolutely shameless plug!) Well, after months of work, it’s here… RockOm.net is now live! I’m proud to be a part of the RockOm team. RockOm is an online music community with a spiritual focus… but inclusive of all musics, and all spiritualities, from rock, Gospel and bluegrass, to Hindu kirtans, and Sufi chants, and all the yearning, questing, and questioning in-between.

The bottom line is that if you have any love of music, or any interest in the spiritual aspects of life, you are who we built RockOm for. So check it out, listen to our podcast, download our featured track, read and comment on the articles, and join in the discussions that are beginning or start a new one… And oh yeah, it’s OK to tell your friends and help us get the word out, too!

BTW… RockOm is in “Beta,” which in English roughly means “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” We have big plans for it and really would love for you to be a part of it!

Journaling

I’ve kept a journal at several key times in my life, but never really threw myself into it until 1998, when I read The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. If you’ve never read the book, well, you should. I don’t want to go into my "frimmin‘" superlatives here, but The Artist’s Way is a book that truly changed my life. It’s largely a workbook, filled with exercises to do. Unlike other spiritual self-improvement workbooks,such as Brezhny’s Pronoia, these exercises aren’t meant to entertain you by reading about them… they are really meant to be done, and the more of them you do, the more you will discover about yourself and the more you open up to Isness.

The primary exercise of The Artists’s Way is journaling, specifically a style of journaling Cameron calls "morning pages," writing out exactly three pages by hand, at the very beginning of the day, keeping the pen moving… no censorship, no editing, no revision, no effort to record the previous day’s events. The only goals were complete honesty and stream-of-consciousness itself. Morning pages is essentially letting your soul "take a dump" just as your body does. 

As for the other exercises, a group of friends and I regularly met to discuss them and do them. More often than not, though, I was the only one who did them, and (surprise!) I was the one who benefited most. The effects were tremendous. Really, the me of of 2007 2008 is pretty different from the me of 1998. The Artist’s Way had a part to play in that.

After a year or so, I began doing the morning pages less faithfully, and although I still journaled sporadically, when I started blogging, my private journaling virtually came to a standstill.

One of the reasons why I’ve been blogging less, is that I’ve started journaling again. My style of journaling now isn’t morning pages, per se, but it is just as uncensored and spontaneous. What I do now is carry my oh-so-trendy little Moleskine notebook with me almost everywhere I go. When waiting for someone or something, I have time to write a little. After a meal, I often have time to write a page or so. (Moleskine pages are pretty small). Sometimes I’ll make several little entries in a day. Other times, I’ll go several days between entries.

Is it dangerous to keep my most private thoughts and feelings in a concrete form where they could easily be read by others?  Not really. Since I started journaling again, it’s been in Esperanto!

I’m not dead yet!

Seriously!  I didn’t mean to take an unannounced month off from blogging… (usually I announce those things) and I was startled to realize it’s been a month since my last post. As the Romans said, tempus is a fugitive. 🙂

Besides keeping busy on my job, I’m working on a new and exciting Web project, I’ve started learning French (mais oui!), am continuing with learning Esperanto, and have embarked  on the task of making some extensive changes to  frimmin.com. My spiritual life isn’t dead either, but it’s not quite as easy to summarize in sentence or two.

But at any rate, rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated! I feel happy… I think I’ll go for a walk!

Heroes

I almost feel like I’m coming back to life after being gone awhile!  For the last three days, I’ve been on a “detox” diet, eating vegan, avoiding sugar, limiting caffeine, and exercising.  I already feel a vast difference… I have more energy and better concentration, and my mood isn’t just lighter—I feel an incredible optimism.

Earlier this fall I got hooked on NBC’s show Heroes. (I’ve got a bad habit of missing the first season of good shows… happened to me with Lost, too.) This week I began watching the first season episodes to catch up… still only about ten episodes through it, so no spoilers, please!

Why I mention both of these together is that both of them fit together in my life now. When I lost weight a long time ago, I remember feeling almost unstoppable, like I could do anything. There’s something in this massive tale of people discovering abilities that they didn’t know they had, that resonates with my own discovery of strength and joy that I’ve forgotten I had.

Of course, Heroes resonates strongly with me as a spiritual metaphor. It’s about spiritual warfare, the work of bodhisattvas versus the forces of destruction, fear, violence, and ignorance. This is something that’s coming back to me as well… for quite a while now, my sense of mission and purpose had been receding. Now it’s resurging. Heroes isn’t fiction. It’s spiritual reality. There really was a Spider-Man in New York. The one I know didn’t sling webs or swing from buildings, but he did jump into any fight at a moment’s notice with the goal of saving both the victim and the aggressor, and whenever possible, prevented fights from even starting.  His name is Vernon Kitabu Turner, and now he trains others in the way of the spiritual warrior.

There really are Isaac Mendezes.. . prophets who paint the future they see, presenting the challenge to change it.

There really are Peter Petrellis… persons who catch the spirits of others. One word, which might come from you or from me, might be enough to make them soar into discovering the cure for AIDS, or to bring peace to a war-torn land.

There really are Claire Bennets… people so resilient, they can return day after day to stresses that would tear up most of us.

There really are Hiro Nakamuras… people so filled with delight and wonder they might seem not to take much seriously… except their place in the mission of saving others and saving the  world.

And of course, there really are Jessicas and Sylars… people who will use any means possible to seize money and power.

So…
What kind of hero are you?