Increased confidence for the world

Confidence was the theme this week, and specifically increased confidence in intuitive and decisive areas of life.  After all, what good is having a strong intuition about something or making a bold choice if you are constantly second guessing yourself or if you worry if you did the right thing or not.

I have had moments of confidence in my actions in the past, but in the past few years I’ve not had any.  I have to confirm with others (my wife and friends) that I’m doing the right thing or at least a good thing.  It certainly doesn’t help that many of my major choices have been slapped back in my face for a variety of reasons.  Some of the failures were outside my control completely and but a few of them were lack of realism on my part that they would actually work.

Looking back I can see that I either didn’t have full faith that my choices would work out or I ignored some obvious flaw in my plan.  I may have told myself it was the right thing, I may have confidently portrayed myself with exceeding confidence to those around me, but I was deep down fooling myself.

I have a good friend who believes that when looking for an idea to make money that you have to think huge.  For example, if you want to make 100 grand per year, you have to have a million dollar idea.  I recently read that the opposite tends to be true.  Start with something small that you really feel good about and it will blow up.

My problem lately is that I can’t think of anything.  I like writing this blog even though no one probably looks at it, I like working on my house.  I like some of my hobbies, but the passion really doesn’t bubble up.  I haven’t been fired up about something for a while, so I’m hoping that by trying out some ideas at the very least I can cross them off my list.  So I really hope that my gift of confidence to the world can come back to me in a big way.

Increased intuition for the world

This week the magick principle I worked on was increased intuition.  To recap what I am doing, I’m following a magickal program that uses brief rituals to help empower various qualities in me.  One of the steps is to imagine that I am gifting everyone in the world with the very power I am seeking.

I have been thinking a lot about intuition lately because of this and the benefits of being more intuitive.  To me it’s somewhat like faith, but it’s a more fleeting feeling.  Maybe more faith in yourself that you know what choice or word or action to take to end up where you want to be.  Any goal in life is going to have obstacles in the way, but being able to intuit the best way to get from point a to point b is having a way to get through the obstacle without being trapped in it.  For me, when I’ve had a better grasp on this it’s almost like you have a tailwind pushing you in the direction you want to go.  There are still difficult tasks on the path, but if you know that is what you need to do and then do it, there are increased benefits.

Take for example the start of my career in teaching.  I was newly sober almost 14 years ago and I was told I needed to go to a conference on addiction in Utah.  At the time I didn’t have the money or stability in my life to make it work, but people in my life insisted that it would be good for me and I had committed at the time to listen to people.  So I sucked it up and bought a ticket and paid for the conference.  I had no idea what I was getting into, but it turned out to be one of the best experience I’ve ever had.  A friend of mine was supposed to be a speaker at the conference who would tell their story of addiction to the group of almost 300 people.  I was impressed that she would do such a thing and was happy for her and excited to see her do it.  Turns out at the last minute she had a family emergency that kept her at home.  When I arrived at the conference I was approached by the director who asked me if I would be willing to take her place.  I didn’t know what to say, but after a pep talk from another friend I accepted.  I had to speak for 50 minutes in front of this huge group, tell my embarrassing story of addiction and recovery and I only had a day to prepare.  To make a long story short (too late), I nailed that presentation and got a standing ovation.  I was overwhelmed with such a great feeling!  After the talk, the director approached and told me to go to the office and give my information to the secretary - the conference was going to pay for my entire trip!  I again was in disbelief, all my worries about money and time and everything had just been thrown out the window.

All that happened because I trusted my intuition that maybe my close friends did know what was best and that I should listen and do what they told me.  I had my doubts that it would all work out in the end, but that push was what I needed to break out of the funk I’d been in.  I was in a bad place after getting sober, my life was not going where I wanted it to.  At the time I wouldn’t have called listening to those around me an intuitive notion, but my goal was to make my life better and my means to getting there was not questioning suggestions that I received from loved ones.  I could have skipped the trip and I would probably have stayed sober, but the amazing ride that I had after that probably would have been so amazing.

The part of that intuition that I want back is the feeling I had those years ago.  It’s like being on a moving sidewalk that goes through a haunted house.  There are lots of scary things you see while riding on that sidewalk, but they are all fake.  My intuition of trusting advice given from good sources felt like the scary parts of the ride only approached more quickly, because I started moving towards them at a faster pace.  What happened was that I ended up going through them faster and I got through the scary parts faster.  Had I chosen to not follow the advices I would have just stood still or went backwards on the moving sidewalk and just prolonged the inevitable scary parts.  Being able to trust my intuition at the time helped me so much and without a doubt it helped me.

My hope is that at least one person will read this and get some benefit from this and their life will then become easier.  Even if that doesn’t happen, I still made the attempt at spreading this gift.

Increased Clarity for the world

I finished week two of my new chaos magick ritual and it was about increasing clarity.  This is clarity to make good choices with because you are clear with your destiny.  Imagine how much less stress you would have in your life if you we’re able to see the implications of a particular choice as it relates to your future.  I can say that while I have noticed a drastic change I am going to change how I report on this experiment as I go forward.  I’ll keep the written part, but I’m going to lose the video like I posted last week.  I still made one for this week since I was committed to doing it.

It’s not that I don’t want to share this gift with the world I just think the distraction and time I spend on the video could be put to better use.  What’s interesting is that the current magick’s focus is intuition and I just had a feeling that this would be a better way to go.

So I can see that there are some obvious changes in my approach to presenting these weekly topics to the world.  I can actually give away more by writing, posting a nice picture or video that better relates to the topic at hand.  The very nature of my desire to share the ability of the week will be increased and by spiritual laws this will allow me to keep more of what I want to give away.

I’ve heard this and seen this in so many ways in my life, the lives of my friends and even with famous people.  Just look at the people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  They give their fortunes away faster than they can make it and they only make more money.  A friend of mine runs a food packaging charity like “Feed My Starving Children”.  He is the most giving, selfless person I know and he is surrounded by amazing people and always has everything he needs.  He gives away thousands of dollars a year, hours of his time helping and his laugh can be heard before you see him.  He’s probably one of the happiest people in the world and it’s all because he gives away what ever he has, only to be given even greater gifts.

So that is my purpose in doing this.  I want all of the attributes I am working on and the only way I will get them is to give them away.  It’s selfish, yes.  At the same time it’s really not, because I only want them to be a better person, which in turn will allow me to be a better father, husband and member of the human race.  This in turn will end up being a bigger benefit to the world.  My hope is to show the world that this is the way to be thinking.  It’s not just about money or material possessions which is what communism is, it’s not forced, it’s of free will.  It’s bigger than any government.  It has the potential to change the world and I hope to be one that starts the ball rolling.

If you want to watch the video below, be my guest.  It’s similar to the one last week.

Increased perception for the world

I will attempt to explain what I am doing here.  This is a little outside my comfort zone, but I’ll do my best.  I mentioned in a previous post that I have been practicing some Chaos magick and the current rituals I am doing which I’m not going to get into for the moment have a part where you imagine a particular quality improving your life and then at the end you imagine and offer this gift to the world.  In the video which follows I explain this again and then show myself at the end doing this by putting my hands on my heart and then extending them out while I think about this energy going forth in the world.

Sound a little weird, but it’s not easy to think of in this week of ritual the entire world having an increased level of perception in their life.  So my thought would put forth a physical effort to share this with world.  I plan to have a post in the future about how giving things away is really the only way we get to keep something.  I’ve known this for sometime, it’s hard to explain this to people, but as I continue I’ll get a better grasp on being able to have the words to describe this.

Please watch the video if you want to see what I’m talking about.  I plan on doing this after each week of ritual so I can share the magick with the world.  I’ll post them here.

Magic eye fun

One of the exercises that were recommended for viewing auras were the magic eye images.  I’m not sure I can post any of this but I can post a link most likely.  It’s recommended that you view these for fifteen minutes at a time and do this a few times a day until you can see them instantly.  The site below probably has the worst English of any, but there are many images there to view.

http://www.magiceye3ds.com/pictures.aspx?page=1%0D

If you don’t like the English of the site you can simply google magic eye images and find a bunch of them.  I’ve been looking at a lot of these and for the most part it’s at least relaxing to the eyes.  What’s interesting is that if I do these without my glasses and then put them on I find it’s harder to focus on them.  Not sure what that means for my aura viewing, but I’ll keep working on it.

Chaos and Auras

Two of the things I haven’t written about that I have been reading and practicing are chaos magick and aura viewing.  Both are sort of fringe topics, but ones that have long long histories.  Chaos magick is one of those topics where if you ask for an explanation of what it is, it is likely to end up in some weird place that has nothing to do with the start.  The thing that drew me in was a book call “Real magic” by Dean Radin.  To sum up his book looked at various magic and evidence of it really working and chaos magick was one of the few that showed results.  So last fall I dove down the rabbit  hole and started in not really knowing what I was doing.  It’s as much or little as you want to make it and the techniques you use are based on what you like and what suits you.

The last four sentences didn’t tell you much about it, but I am going to start including some of it in my blog and in my videos.  The problem with sharing is that doing a particular magic act doesn’t lend itself to sharing because you are to promptly forget about what you just did and then not dwell on the ritual as that can actually ruin the magic.  To me it not all that much different than any law of attraction practice that you might find in any number of books, but it is different how you do it.  So far it’s been fun and I’ve had a few results that have made it worthwhile.

The other topic I’m investigating is auras.  I’ve always wondered about them, there are people that can see them, but they seem to be in the minority.  When I looked at it a few years ago, I lost interest because the source I read was basically - cross your eyes and stare at people.  I have since been reading about a more methodical practice that is almost too detailed in how to go about getting your eyes in shape to see this way.  It is step by step and I’ve even had some results looking at my plants.

I hope to share more as time goes on and now being stuck at home for the next few weeks I have the time to work on it!

Acceptance video

I finished my next video on acceptance and posted it as you can see below.  I’ll come back to this topic again as I think it’s such an important point for people to fully absorb into their deepest being.  I has brought me so much peace and serenity and it’s never not worked for me when I actively choose to think about it.  I hope you are enjoying the videos, I’m learning as I’m going.  I do realize that my voice is calming and my demeanor is the opposite of excitable.  That may be an issue, but it’s hard to show a lot of emotion when pitching methods for increasing peace and serenity.  I maybe could use some kind of catch phrase!  We’ll see where this goes, maybe I don’t need to do this every day.  I do happen to have time right now, so it’s not been so hard to do.

Enjoy the video and if you do please share it!

Acceptance of what is brings peace and serenity

I’m working on my next video and I have a number of ideas of direction, but I’m not sure how to convey my ideas in a way that will make sense to some one who isn’t familiar with acceptance.  At least how I go about accepting things.  I know as I sit here tonight and write that I’m struggling with it a bit, probably because I’m not completely happy with being stuck here at home.  I feel like life is on hold for a while until this virus stuff passes, but that’s not entirely true because I yam doing different things to help move things forward.

I need to accept things just the way they are.  Anything less creates problems for me, it also has a tendency to show me the way to the next thing.  The part of acceptance that is tricky is that you don’t need to like what you are accepting, but you sort of have to be at least OK with the situation as it stands at the moment.  After things are accepted, then you can make the choice of moving on and either leaving it as is or making changes. You can only change a limited amount of things.  The limit is what you can change yourself or in yourself.  You can’t change other people or how they think.  You can’t change the weather.

To do this I need to say to myself, this is how it is and how I got to this place may or may not be my doing, but it is what it is.

Using that to then improve my life is not so obvious, but if I can see it as a dualistic pair like good and evil or up and down, it begins to dawn on me why that is the important part.  It is part one of the change.  Part two is then taking the action to change what I can.

To wrap this up I’m going to end on the serenity prayer, if you haven’t heard it before it goes like this.  “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

New video to watch

I posted the second video, I show off my indoor plant collection, which is something I would have never have thought about sharing even though I have posted a lot about my outdoor farming and gardening.  I show my 20 year old plumeria tree which I take out in the summer and some of my other favorite plants.  So take a watch, I hope you like it!

It’s supposed to snow tonight so if it does I’ll shoot that and if it snows enough I’ll have to take some pics too!

Video blog up and running

Well I didn’t quite get it done in a day, but close.  I just posted my first entry in my video blog.  You can watch it below.

I hope you like it, I realized that I either forgot or didn’t do about a dozen things while I was editing it, but I’ve never been one that lets perfection stand in the way of progress.  I’ll get better at this and from some of the garbage videos I’ve watched out there I think this isn’t terrible!  Hope you like it and keep checking back for more.  I plan on posting a new video as often as once a day.  I probably should set a more reasonable goal, but I’m going to aim high and try to really kick this off with a big push.

Video Blog

So I'm stuck at home during this corona virus insanity.  It's been OK so far, but my daughter is getting on my nerves a bit.  I want some time to be alone and to be able to think, but it's not been happening.  One thought I had this morning was to start doing a daily video for the blog.  I want to be able to make a short video that focuses on something other than all the BS that the news and many others are feeding us.  It all started a week or so ago when a friend of mine asked me to help him make a video about corona virus masks.  It was fun to do and really surprisingly easy.  It's a good video, but not great.  I'll share it here to show you since making a shield to protect yourself when you are out and about is probably not a bad thing to share and he would like it if he knew that more people might be able to see it.

I'm going to think about this a bit and hopefully start putting up daily videos that help me remember to do good things like enjoy the beauty of the world.  Things I have been doing, but maybe could be doing better.  I'll still keep writing, but this might help push me in the right direction and help me share the peace that I have with the world.

Finished Christmas presents

So I was finally able to finish my chainsaw art, here is the bear.  His eyes may look a little wonky but that’s because I used some polished Lake Superior agates that were found at my father in laws house. His head didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted, but it was better than the first one I made years ago. I haven’t finished the signs he will hold.  One is going to say “welcome” and the other will say “go away”.

The next one is the first eagle I made.  I think it’s pretty good, but compared to what I wanted to make.  At least compared to the second one.  The problem with the second was that the log was smaller so I had less room for the body.  Next I want to make one with its wings stretched out, it would be flying sideways, so all the feathers are stretched out.  Probably a few levels beyond my skill, but it would be fun to try.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

I keep coming back to thoughts about how we reflect our thoughts on to others.  I don’t always see it right away, but it becomes obvious after the fact.  For example, my wife and I had an argument today and she ended up calling me an idiot.  Later after we argued about it, she admitted she thought herself to be an idiot for what she did.  She didn’t necessarily mean to call me that (at least that what I’m telling myself!).  In the heat of the moment she fired that at me, my feeling were hurt and I got angry at her.  The anger she had was towards herself, but what I saw was the anger directed at me.  I see more and more that many times the thoughts and actions I see from another person are not always easy to interpret and instead of mirroring what you see, like yelling back at a person who is yelling at you, it helps to remain calm and try to see what is behind the thoughts of the person in front of you.

I am not good at this at all, the person who I end up confronting the most is my wife and it’s easy to fall into old habits of argument that I quickly lose this introspective view.  It is only in hindsight that I am able to calm down and think through what happened and then go back and either speak my disagreement or apologize for something.

Another example is American politics at the current moment.  I do my best to take a neutral stance for one good reason.  None of it is worth getting that worked up about.  I listen to one side accuse the other of the thing they are doing.  That side denies the accusation and throws something back at the other that they are guilty of doing.  It really is quite the show when you take an observer view.  I’m not interested in forwarding either a Democratic or Republican viewpoint in this forum.  I will say that deep down somewhere there are good ideals that are put forth by each of them, but it is such a muddy mess right now that neither is worth my time.  The reason I brought them up is because the mirror blindness that they have is so striking that there are few examples I can think of that illustrate my point any better.  I hear them calling each other hypocrites and what I see is that they should be calling themselves hypocrites because they can’t see that they are guilty of they very behavior that they accuse the other of.  They are unable to see beyond the fact that while both have good ideas, they both can be right.

I’m right and therefore because I’m right you must be wrong is the human thought that we all seem to have written into our DNA.  Even I’m right, so you must be slightly less right is still creates the same problem in the end.  Essentially it sums up politics and the argument I had with my wife this morning.  If you’re not for me, you’re against me.  If I’m right, you’re wrong.  If you don’t agree with me, then you disagree with me.  It’s very hard to see without the detached viewpoint that black and white are rarely the only two choices,  there are a million shades of grey or whatever color you want to choose.  Immediately assuming that you know what someone else is thinking based on what you are thinking is most often a way to keep conflict going.  Someone might be yelling back at you because you scared them and that’s their defense mechanism kicking in.  The assumption that they are wrong or that you know what they are thinking is hard to stop.  I need to continue to work on this, I think it is a key to making this world a better place.

One more project almost done

I’ll continue on my seemingly endless parade of projects I’m working on.  My daughter needed a new set of drawers for her clothes.  I’m not a big fan of buying stuff like that when there is such an overwhelming supply of furniture in this world that can be fixed up and look like new again.  So for about 75 dollars I am going to fix up and refinish my parents bedroom set that they no longer need.  As I said in the last post they are moving and their house is a bit smaller, so they were looking to get rid of some of their bedroom furniture.  The two pieces I took have been empty for 14 years.  They bought new pieces when they moved last time and just put the old ones in their extra bedrooms.  Now the new house has smaller bedrooms and they don’t need such large pieces in the rooms anyway.

Here is the partly finished product.  I used a chalk paint and then lightly sanded the edges.  I am in the middle of applying a wax coat to protect the paint and then all I need are a few handles and some grease for the drawer slides and away we go with updated furniture.  You can see the original brown that they were by looking at the taller piece in the back.  They also had some ugly large handles, whic I plan to replace with darker thin ones.  My daughter, even though she picked the color and helped paint everything is not liking this change.  She likes her old kid sized dresser and is not liking this much.  I’m pretty sure she’ll come around when it’s all done.  It’s going to be very nice looking when I finish.  I probably could sell each one for a few hundred after the work I put in, but I like them too much!

Art

I’m continuing with my steady progression of hobbies and interests that never seem to stop.  Today I started working on some chainsaw artwork for my parents and and my father in law.  If they turn out like I hope they will be the perfect Christmas presents for them.

I’m not quite ready to show my progress yet, but here is one of the logs I’m going to be working with.  Its actually going to have some meaning hopefully for my parents as this is from one of the trees they cut down a few months ago.  This was a tree that was in front of my grandparents house and it had to go to make room for the new house they are building on that site.  So far I’m working on a half eagle and a bear.  So we’ll see how it goes, maybe I’ll have some time to take some better pics tomorrow.

Grandpa

So I’ll start with my grandpa, he was probably the most intelligent, but stubborn person that I have met.  He was a farmer his whole life and never went past high school in his education.  He was the salutatorian of his class, even with hardly attending class his senior year.  His father was an alcoholic with liver disease and emphysema and was unable to do much on the farm.  Had he been able to go to college he would have went to law school.  Within a few years he was drafted to serve in World War II and was off to basic training.  Fortunately for me he was sent back home after he completed his training to work on the farm.  He would have went to Omaha beach on D-day and if that happened there is a pretty good chance I wouldn’t be writing this now!

Here is a picture of him with his favorite dog, Tiny. He would have been in his early 20’s when these were taken.  My family has always had St. Bernards and I even have two right now.  They are the most gentle and loving breed I have ever seen and have such great personalities.

This picture was taken in the mid 1920’s.  My grandpa is the little boy in this picture and his grandpa is the pilot sitting in the plane.  This was the first plane in the county and the hangar for the plane was on the farm where I grew up and my brother now lives.  My great, great grandpa was a land speculator who owned a number of farms and he justified the plane purchase so he could check on all his properties.  His story will need to wait for another day.

The top picture is the farm where he grew up and where my brother currently resides.  The bottom is of the house up close.  It would be interesting to get a current picture as the only building left from this picture taken almost 80 years ago is the house.  The house now looks completely different as well, but it’s main structure is still there and it will be 130 years old next year.  Another thing I would like to point out in the top picture is how close to the town of Sleepy Eye we are.  You can see houses and a water tower if you look closely.  This was a source of great consternation for my family as the town has inched closer and closer over the years.  My grandpa used his love of the law to torment the city whenever he could and my dad and brother have followed in his footsteps.  Every time I visit I hear new grumbling over some happening in the city.  This battle has been going and doesn’t look like it will end anytime soon.  It’s really quite remarkable how stupid the city has been over the years and while there are interesting stories to tell that have shaped my family, I’m going to keep them to myself for now.

Family History

I’m going to take a bit of a different angle with the blog in the next few weeks.  I have been deeply interested in my family history.  From the research I’ve done I know there are a few famous people, some that came on the Mayflower and probably a few infamous people.  My mom gave me a pile of papers and information on my family that my grandma had put together over the years.  She dabbled in things, but was never really organized.  I plan to digitize her notes and confirm the research she did.  I want to share my work with this blog as I go through the papers as it might help me find a place to share the more interesting finds and help those putting their own family history together with some ideas on where to start and how to do it themselves.

So I’ll share a bit about my closest famous cousin.  He was a famous physicist who was very important in the development of sonar and radar.  He was instrumental in creating systems that allows radio signals to be transmitted much farther than they had been previously.  He went on a mission to fly to the South Pole and actually has an island in Antarctica named after him!  He was part of the Majestic 12 who reviewed the Roswell, NM alien incident.  On top of that he has a high school in Texas named after him.  His name is Lloyd V Berkner.  Unfortunately he has passed away, but there is an incredible amount of information about him and I’ve read his books and ones that were written about him.  Even though we never met, he has inspired me to follow my dreams and not let anyone tell me it’s impossible.  I’ll be putting up some pictures and info about him as I dig into his past.

I’m sure I will find many more stories and hopefully you will find them as interesting as I do!

Halloween!

How could I miss the chance to include some pumpkins in my posting!  I have always loved pumpkins and that is one thing that hasn’t changed.  I had one year where I wasn’t involved with growing them and this year I went all out again.  My kids and my nieces had a one acre plot of pumpkins, their intent was to sell them this fall and they did.  I think when it’s all said and done they took in close to 1500 dollars!

One of the perks of having your own private pumpkin patch is that you get to keep pretty much whatever you want.  So I’m going to show you a few and leave the deep philosophical musings for another day.  The first pumpkin is about the most perfect a pumpkin can be.  I didn’t want to carve this one, it will get eaten in a few days!

The second is one that became known as buttkin, it is two pumpkins that grew together.  Ugly compared to the first, but beautiful in its own way.

The last two are carved up pictures of the ones we did.   The very last is a closeup of buttkin, so you can see how I made it have a happy and sad face.  We won’t win awards for carving, but we had a good time and froze our fingers as the pumpkins were nearly frozen when we cleaned them out.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Starvation and blown tires

Yesterday was a fun day, until it wasn’t.  I drove a truck full of food to a food packing event that it produces meals for those who need food.  This food goes all over the world to where ever it is needed.  Africa, Haiti, anywhere a hurricane strikes or just down the street at the local food shelf.  This is a fun way to get this food ready in mass quantities for groups who are wanting to help out those in need.  The first picture is the back of the truck with the extra ingredients.  The brown and yellow bags are soy protein and the white and green bags are rice.

What you see in the picture is enough food to make 40,000 meals.  There is also some flavoring and vitamins that are added to the mix and each bag has six servings in it.  It is designed to be the right mix of nutrition for a person who is starving and hasn’t eaten for a while.  Of course anyone could eat it.  It is quite tasty and has a chicken soup flavor.

The company that my friend runs also makes a rice and bean mix and oatmeal.  He does this by buying bulk ingredients and then working with groups to host these events.  Yesterday the group I delivered to packaged 9000 meals.  Not a huge amount compared to some, but still enough to feed a lot of people!  The end product was a full pallet of boxes all ready to go.

Here you can see a bit how they set up I had some other picture, but there were a lot of faces and as I don’t know any of these folks I didn’t want to post them out of respect.  They had a group of about 70 people and they knocked out their packaging in about an hour.

We loaded up after that and I headed to another town to drop off the finished food at a trucking warehouse and then home.  I should also add at this point my friend runs his operation using inexpensive tools, old trucks that have been fixed up and his headquarters is an old school that was closed.  He puts the maximum amount of money into his food in order to get the most bang for people’s money.

The problem with this is that things tend to break.

On the way home I blew out both back tires and barely kept my overloaded truck on the road.  The police that came to check on us was amazed that I was able to keep the truck out of the ditch.  My friends came down pulled the tires off and changed them on the side of the road.  We finished up and I got home at 3 am.  One interesting thing I learned was how to seat a truck tire using ether starting fluid and a torch.  It was cool to watch, I wish I would have taken a video.

There are not enough people like my friends in the world.  He has pretty much dedicated his life to this program and feeding the starving people in the world.  There is such a huge need for this, but the funds are limited and the means to move massive quantities of food in a usable form from this country to another are not cheap.  Yet he keeps pushing forward and has packaged countless millions of meals for others and he only has a small staff of a few paid employees and a fleet of run down trucks to do it.  He doesn’t buy tv commercial time, he doesn’t spend his money on fancy buildings or even wear nice clothes.  He is a saint who wears plaid.  He’s been an inspiration for me since I’ve met him and he is pushing me in this direction.  I have liked to help his causes with help and by giving him money.

I’ve come to the conclusion that doing selfless and mostly thankless work like this is where my life is going.  I’ve had some ideas lately about starting a program that helps people in need.  He has the corner on the food market and I don’t think I could do it better.  What I want to explore is the need for another human need - shelter.

I was shocked to learn that in Minnesota when prisoners are done with their sentence they are now booted out of prison whether or not they have a place to go.  This isn’t a huge problem in the summer as it’s pretty nice, but there are limited places to go when it’s cold.  The system already stacks the deck against felons and criminals and many times they are forced to return to their life of crime just to make ends meet.  To me if someone has done their time, it’s time to move on and give them another chance at making a better life for themselves.  This just doesn’t happen.

I’m going to work on a plan that helps this group of people, the people that society would rather see locked up and stay out of sight.  Sometimes all they need is a chance.  Sure some of them will go back and reoffend, but most just want to get on with it and be normal.

I’m not sure how all this will work out, but what I want to do will help these people meet a basic need.  The need to have a place called home.  If they don’t have that to worry about, they can find a job, they can help their families and communities.  They will have one less major worry that will allow them to keep working in a good direction.  There is a few ways this could happen and a nearly infinite amount of variables that could be used to help.

I am planning on going big with this and making a plan that could be copied by others to help spread a sustainable way to help the ridiculous number of people than cycle through the prisons in this country.  More to come here, but I need to get these ideas out of me and into the world.

Irregular symmetry

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that we see ourselves reflected in the world.  There are a few quotes that come to mind that get me going.  First is one by Carl Jung, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves”.  Another is from Hermann Hesse “ If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

These two quotes together are ones that have really helped me to contemplate my actions.  I really try to think of those ideas when I find myself worked up about something.  When I want to lash out at someone who has said something I think is ridiculous or stupid.  If I can do it, pausing when that anger rises up and remembering this is often enough to prevent me from saying or doing something stupid.

The tricky part of this comes into play when we look at nature.

This picture is beautiful, I took it after one of our late season snowstorms in April this year.  Take a close look at the trees.  The trees here aren’t ones that show perfect symmetry, they are leaning and some are growing into each other, but overall they do have balance, they held up all that snow and didn’t fall over.  If I were able to single a few of them out when they are fully alive in the summer they would look fairly symmetrical.  The part you can’t see is the root system.  While it doesn’t look exactly like the tree tops, there is some reflection in how roots spread underground.  None of this is like a perfect flower that has amazing symmetry, but that brings me to the point of this post.

The reflection mentioned by the authors above is not perfect.  It is not a total mirror image,  it is like the reflection seen between tree tops and the roots,  there is symmetry, but it’s not obvious with a quick glance.  To me it explains some of the divisions in this country, if you read the same account of current political events going on (current or historical) you might wonder what is going on because each side of the story is so different and so far apart that it hardly makes sense to an outsider.

What I noticed is that the interpretation of the event depends on what mirror is being used,  if you are on one side of a political argument you would tend to believe the storyline from that side.  If you are a more neutral observer like I have become, you wonder how each side is able to sleep at night because one accuses the other of doing something they are ten times more guilty of doing and ignores the criticism that they are also guilty of the same thing.

 The issue arises because we think we are looking out a window, but it is in fact a mirror.  However, the reflection we see is distorted.  It’s like the difference between the roots and the treetop.  Very different but the same.  Like a just about every treetop, one side may be a little lopsided but over all if you divide any tree right down the middle, one half will be roughly the same as the other.

This distortion I think is the cause of the anger or irritation.  This is also behind hypocrisy, which is probably going to be a future topic for a post.  If you are looking at a distorted mirror you can’t see that in most cases you’re in fact looking at the problem.  Most often assigning blame or accusing someone else of some wrong (except for the most part  if the person has actually physically hurt you), comes from the blurry mirror you look at.  This is all very sneaky though because being humble and admitting you might be wrong is so difficult for humans.  

Over the years that I have been able to think about this, I have yet to be able to find a good rebuttal that is able to disprove the two quotes at the top.  The more I think about it, the more I am able to see that this tricky character trait of humans is constantly causing problems for people.  The only solution I have found is to take a short pause or deep breath and then focus on what is going on inside me.  It has taken time, but it has lead me to some very serene times in my life and the more I can practice this nonjudgmental approach to life the better my life becomes.