Posts in the “personal” category

September, 2018: Before doctors figured out that I have a rare blood disease called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), I went unconscious nine times, typically vomiting while I was unconscious. The first three went like this:

• During the first event I stumbled around my apartment like I had been poisoned, splashing cold water on my face, and generally just hoping I wasn’t going to die. Despite those efforts, I went unconscious. I only knew that because I threw up on the floor while I was out.
• At the beginning of the second event where I felt like I had been poisoned I thought, “If I live through this one, I need to update my will.”
• During the third event I thought, “Apparently I’m going to die soon. I just want other people to be happy, and if I live, I want to help them however I can.”

After that, for events #4 through #9, along with four subsequent cases of allergic angina — what I call “fake heart attacks” — I had no significant thoughts in my mind, just peace.

These days when something bad happens I recall those nine syncope events and four heart/cardiac events, and know that I could have died during any of them. When I think that way, all of today’s little problems seem insignificant.

I was watching a Season 4 episode of Maine Cabin Masters and heard an interesting saying that Ryan has about Sunday and Monday:

“Don’t let your Monday ruin your Sunday.”

Initially Ashley and Jedi were talking about this, and then I think Ryan talked about it as well. They started the conversation when they found a sign in someone’s cabin, and Ashley noted that Ryan says that all the time.

The basic idea is that you know you have to go to work on Monday, but don’t let that ruin your Sunday, meaning that Sunday is still your day off, and you should enjoy it, rather than worrying about Monday all Sunday like many people do.

They also mention this saying in this Facebook post.

Polishing the Mirror by Ram Dass is the best book I know on spirituality, and this quote was posted on his Twitter page yesterday.

“When there is no attachment to the past and no expectation of the future, there is only this moment — the eternal present, here and now.”

~ Ram Dass, in one of his best books, be love now

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”

~ Ram Dass

“I am in the world, but not concerned with the world. I am going through the marketplace, but not as a purchaser.”

~ Ram Dass, quoting Maharaji, quoting Kabir, in Miracle of Love, one of his best books

I started reading the book Walking Each Other Home by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush a few nights ago, and if you like Ram Dass, you’ll like this book. This is an image from early in the book about a “pretty fierce journey.”

I’ve known about Ram Dass and his books for a long time, but I don’t think I considered his work too much until I stumbled across the book, Polishing The Mirror, which I now consider to be the best spiritual book I’ve ever read. More recently I started reading his newer book, Walking Each Other Home, and the following quote comes from that book.

~~~

There is no inherent self — we are boundless. The ego is a structure of mind that organizes the universe, particularly around the relationship to separateness. It is the steering mechanism for you as a separate entity surviving and functioning within this world, on this plane.

Here are two favorite quotes from Anandamayi Ma. I think almost all of this comes via Ram Dass, but at the moment I can’t remember what book I saw this in. So I assume that Ram Dass or one of his assistants spoke, wrote, or compiled almost all of the following, and I’ll link to one of his books once I can confirm this.

If you’ve ever seen the “Maine Cabin Masters” tv show, you may have seen the black flag that they fly on their cabins while they’re working on them. If you ever wondered about their black flag, here’s what I can tell you from this deleted scene video:

• In the video, which was posted on March 19, 2020, Ryan states that the flag is new.
• The flag signifies the Maine Cabin Masters “are here” and “we’re kicking butt on this project, and it’s going to be the best this camp will ever be.”
• It is the Maine Cabin Masters “skull and crossbones.”
• It’s a Chase Morrill design.

From a Ram Dass article titled, Dying is Absolutely Safe.

“As your practice proceeds you’ll be able to remain conscious as you transition from your normal waking state into the states of sleep ... once you can remain conscious like this, you’ll no longer sleep but merely pass through the night by going into deeper states of meditation.”

To those who know me that sounds like something I might write, but those words were published by Ram Dass in 1971.

This image shows a little more of his text. I deleted a few sentences that were repetitive or used obscure words.

(Update: Here’s a link to more information on Ram Dass’s best books.)

I was just looking around for a Ram Dass quote about Maya and couldn’t find anything great, but then I found this YouTube video where he talks about Maya and illusion:

“There’s a philosophy in India where the outside world, the world of things, all is illusion. And that’s a way to deal with the sense world ... to get free of it, and go inward, and go into the Atman, the God within.”

In this Entering the Stream article, he also states the following:

“Beings who have understood how it all is, who have realized their identity with the ātman, are stream enterers; they have tasted the flow of the nectar of liberation. They are a breed apart from other people in the world. They know something others do not know. Every part of their life is colored by that merging.

A free being no longer identifies with the body or personality, with a personal past or future. The body, the packaging, still has its karma running off and the skandhas, the mental aggregates, continue, but with nobody in them.”

(For more on Ram Dass, see my article on The Best Books of Ram Dass (My Recommendations).)

As I continue my quest to learn about Ram Dass and Maya (illusion), I also had a very hard time finding any quotes about Maharaj-ji and Maya, and after sifting through about 1,000 pages of books I finally found this Maharaj-ji quote:

• “All is God’s will, but Maya prevents you from knowing it’s all God’s will.”

If you’re interested in this, you can find this quote and a little bit more on page 326 of the book, Miracle of Love.

October, 2023 Update: I also just found the following quotes in an out-of-print book about Maharaj-ji:

• “You see others trapped by maya (illusion).”
• “This temple and whatever is seen by the human eye are illusion.”
• “Delusion makes everything look real.”

In that first quote the “(illusion)” part was in the book, I didn’t add that.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ram Dass, see my post on The Best Ram Dass Books I Know.

(This is a recounting of a long dream from October 1, 2016.)

We were playing at our camp when my older brother — who was standing on higher ground than I — saw something in the distance. He stood upright, then perfectly still. After a few moments he turned to me in a look of panic I had never seen before, pointed in a direction opposite from where he was looking, and screamed, “Run! Run!” I was startled at his behavior but I knew that something was very wrong, so I ran. And I ran.

I ran as fast as I could, weaving through the brush and constantly changing my course as I was chased by a white man on a dark horse. I thought I might be close to safety when I darted through some bushes, but I ran right into a creek that was too wide to jump across. As I paused for a moment to decide how to continue, the white man shot me in the back.

In intense pain and sudden shock, I stumbled forward into the creek, bent over with one hand in the creek. As I attempted to stand up and regain my balance, I was shot in the back again. This time my body flew forward towards the opposite side of the creek. I tried to control my fall but could not, and my torso slammed against the land. The right side of my face was pressed against the ground, my eyes still open. My right arm was trapped under my body, my left arm was somewhere down my left side. My legs lay in the creek’s water.

Spent the last few hours dreaming of living in a colony on the Moon. Every moment was a new experience – bad pay, canned food, watching a movie in a makeshift theater — which reminded me of the M*A*S*H movie and tv series — but also several different beings and cultures that I found fascinating. Then I suddenly had the idea for a new book that I wanted to call, “Moon’s First Murder.” I started scribbling down some notes, but knew I didn’t know enough about the cultures, so I recruited a friend to help me with that.

~ a lucid dream note from April 2, 2014

(Note: This is one of over 1,000 lucid dreams that I have had and made notes about. For some reason I have had lucid dreams (and sleep paralysis) quite often, so at some point I started making notes about the dreams.)

I fell asleep very slowly last night, so I was able to stay awake through the whole falling-asleep process, i.e., the usual sleep paralysis part. As I was still awake I started to hear the usual “here/there sucking sounds,” and just told myself that I shouldn’t be afraid, I’ve done this hundreds of times before.

And then the instant I fell asleep here I found myself in a hospital there. A doctor and nurse were looking at a bandage on the lower-right part of my abdomen, above the appendix, and closer to the center of the stomach.

As I looked at “myself,” I noted that the skin color was lighter than mine, and that my arms were smaller and skinnier, and there wasn’t much hair on the abdomen or arms. After the inspection the doctor asked if I had any questions, and I said, “Yes. Who am I? And where am I?”

I’ve probably documented over 1,000 lucid dreams in the last 20 years or so, and here’s another one from this morning. To me, the most important part about this one is the hypnopompic hallucination stuff I note at the end.

Had a long dream — approximately 2:30-4am — about “my wife” doing drugs without me knowing it.

I starts with us driving in a seedy part of town. She had mentioned that she knew someone who could get us some drugs if I/we wanted to try them. We ended up getting something that looked like a small rock or stone.

If you have ever known anyone with schizophrenia, this scene with Walter Bishop on Fringe — and the scenes leading up to it (particularly the one with Broyles) — will strike very close to home. (See Fringe, Season 4, Episode 3, for more details.)

I’m not sure how many people can understand this, but once you’ve been through nine syncope events (unconsciousness), dozens of other pre-syncope events, and four cardiac events (“fake heart attacks”, also known as allergic angina), and a five-month heart infection (pericarditis), you just accept that death is going to happen, and it’s not in your control. So, personally, I just try to be grateful, and hopefully help others along the way, because I know that my time here is limited.