If only ... I had a little bit more time
If only ... I had a little bit more time with you
I fell down, down, down
Into this dark and lonely hole
There was no one there to care about me anymore
And I needed a way to climb and grab a hold of the edge
You were sitting there holding a rope
...
And maybe someday I’ll see you again
We’ll float up in the clouds and we’ll never see the end
A poem from the tv series Monk:
“Hold me, Adrian,
my darling husband.
True love’s touch is so rare a gift.
How much more precious is your caress
who loves so deeply,
yet fears the warmth,
of hand on hand.
Still your love is given free,
only to me,
only to me.”
~ Trudy Monk
I started watching Dawson’s Creek recently because I was curious what Joshua Jackson was like before Fringe, and I have to say — I know their conversations are intentionally verbose — but even in the short talks between Dawson and his parents, my relationship with my parents was nothing like that. We never talked about things because my mom was very sick and my dad was very domineering and abusive. So I watch this show and wonder, is that what parental relationships are really like in a healthy household?
I’ve always used some sort of Kanban technique in my brain, long before I knew the formal meaning of a Kanban board or Kanban process. But in the last few years I started using a whiteboard as my Kanban board, and I really like it. It makes me more organized and productive, and I feel like the productive part is because it makes work and progress visible. In my entire computer programming career I have always liked the term, “make work visible,” and Kanban and Scrum are the epitome of that.
Rocky Balboa, talking to his son:
“And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.”
I enjoyed this quote from Rocky Balboa the first time I saw the movie, and I appreciate it even more now after getting my a** kicked by this f-ing blood disease, but still grinding along every day.
Imagine being 30 years old, and life is good. You’re healthy, vibrant, and even astonishingly good at math.
But then just a few moments later you can’t make sense of the world. You don’t know what’s real and what’s not.
You begin hearing voices that aren’t there. Maybe you see things that aren’t there.
Shortly after this you’re put into a “mental institution.”
That’s what happened to my mom. For whatever reason, shortly after I was born, she was stricken with schizophrenia.
(If you’ve ever seen the tv series Fringe, my mom is almost exactly like Walter Bishop, or vice-versa.)
A few people I’ve talked to recently who have (or had) cancer told me they can clearly remember the moment when their doctor told them that they had cancer.
In my case I do remember the conversation with the doctor, but that was more of a formality. When I picked up the phone to talk to her, I already had a pad of paper and a pencil in hand, and I was ready to write down the details she was going to tell me. Because in my case I was pretty certain that I had cancer when I saw the ultrasound results a few days earlier.
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, 2022 Update: I also just found the following quotes in an out-of-print book about Maharaj-ji:
In that first quote the “(illusion)” part was in the book, I didn’t add that.
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.”
[toc]
WARNING: Chest pain may be a serious life or death matter. If you’re experiencing chest pain right now, don’t waste any time reading this article — get yourself to a hospital.
On Sunday, November 3, 2019, I had just finished lunch, looked at the clock, and saw that I could fit in about an hour of work before the Denver Broncos game started. Despite Denver’s 2-6 record, I was looking forward to see how Broncos’ quarterback Brandon Allen would do in his first career start following Joe Flacco’s neck injury.
A minute later I had severe chest pain. The pain wasn’t in the middle of my chest, but it was on the left side of the left chest/breast area. To the best of my memory, I went from feeling perfectly fine to having severe pain in a matter of moments; there was no other warning.
I went to the ER one day late last year with severe chest pain. I exercise a lot and had been eating well, so I didn’t think I was having a heart attack, but the pain just kept getting worse, so off I went.
“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 be love now
I am without form, without limit
Beyond space, beyond time
I am in everything, everything is in me
I am the bliss of the universe
Everywhere am I.
~ Ram Kir
A friend of mine was a devout yoga practitioner, and even studied under B.K.S. Iyengar. Right before she passed away, she began to cry tears of joy, and said, “All is one, all is one.”
(This is a recounting of a 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.
“Long, uninterrupted, alert practice is the firm foundation for restraining the fluctuations of the consciousness.”
~ Patanjali (via Iyengar)
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 like my books and want to earn a little extra income, I just started using the Gumroad “affiliates” program. Just sign up with Gumroad, link to one or more books, then hopefully make some sales and earn a little extra money.
I’m starting with a 30% commission, so if you sell a $10 book like Learn Scala 3 The Fast Way! you’ll earn $3, and if you sell a $20 book like Functional Programming, Simplified: Updated for Scala 3, you’ll earn $6 (USD).
If you’re interested, start the process here on Gumroad.com. You’ll also want to read their help page for Affiliates.
“Why am I always sick?” That’s a question I used to ask myself a lot. Other people asked it as well: “Al, why are you always sick?”
I remember one time I was in the same room as my wife while she was on the phone. She was taking to her sister, who was talking about her husband (my brother-in-law), and their conversation went on for quite some time. Afterwards I said, “Wow, I hope you guys don’t talk about me all the time like that.” My wife said, “No, we just say that you seem to get sick a lot.”
[Note: This is a chapter from a currently-unpublished book I’m (slowly) writing on meditation and mindfulness.]
As a spiritual being, one possible way to think of life here on Earth is as a “game” that serves as a training ground for the soul. It’s a game like other games, so it has many levels, and they get harder and harder as you progress. So in this case, the better you become at the game of spirituality — The Soul Game — the harder the levels become.
A bit of personal health history, including having a PICC Line in my arm:
April 24, 2014: I learned that I’m going to have my thyroid removed tomorrow because of thyroid cancer.
April 24, 2015: These days I spend 40 minutes each morning administering intravenous medicine to myself via a PICC Line that has been inserted/installed in my arm and chest. You can read about the whole experience in my diverticulitis diary if you’d like.
April 24, 2016: Doctors think I may have a pheochromocytoma, which has a 10% chance of killing you when they try to remove it.
April 24, 2017: Today marks the 11th consecutive month that I haven’t required a trip to the ER, which is pretty much a record for my last four years.
