Posts in the “personal” category

I just heard about the book Live to Forgive this morning. The introduction on Amazon says it all: “In Live to Forgive, former ESPN producer Jason Romano walks readers through his personal journey of forgiving his alcoholic father. Through sharing his own story, Romano invites readers to enter into their own messy journeys of forgiveness-to fully feel their pain, evaluate their pain, transform their pain, and ultimately forgive those who caused their pain. The only route to freedom and peace is forgiveness.”

I’ve written a lot about meditation before, and in this post I’d like to talk about something different that I do from time to time. You see, where many people like to go to a movie or watch the television, I use my meditating power to create my own “holodeck in my mind” to do anything I want to do.

I call this a “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” meditation, because I start by closing my eyes, start meditating in something like a savasana style, and then mentally go out through the back of a closet in a house I used to live in.

A cavern with a recliner

Once I come out the other side of the closet, I come to a path, where I take an elevator ten stories down into my mind, and that brings me to a Star Trek-like holodeck, as shown in this image:

As shown, the holodeck has a virtual recliner where I can sit, relax, and start doing anything I want.

While many people know the famous Ram Dass book, Be Here Now — which is currently the #1 All-Time Best-Selling book in Spiritualism on Amazon — I’d argue that it’s not necessarily his best book.

For example, I have met a few people in my travels who were struggling to read and understand it it because of all the art and 1960s “hippie style” stuff — which I personally like — and it was at that time I realized that while Be Here Now is his most famous book, it may not be his best book. (The problem with the “hippie stuff” is that it’s also distracting.)

Ram Dass’s best books

IMHO, I think the following books are his best, where I believe best will also depend on (a) a person’s experience with his writings and teachings, and also (b) their own progress on the spiritual path. And in this case, I think it’s also about book’s that are more straight to the point.

“Courage doesn’t always roar.” I just found this image in a folder on one of my computers. I don’t remember where I took this photo, but I think I took it at a small restaurant in Boulder or Louisville, Colorado. The text comes from Mary Anne Radmacher.

“I am everywhere. All are my expression. For me, there is no coming and no going.”

~ Sri Krishna, as quoted in I Am Not The Body, by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This page is a collection of over 65 quotes from mindfulness and meditation masters/teachers, and it’s specifically about the need for intensity of concentration in your meditation practice.

The quotes generally aren’t in any specific order, they’re just in the order in which I found them. The later quotes in this article are ones that I had to google for and then confirm, but that’s about the extent of the ordering.

I recently started reading the “spiritual classic” book, I Am That, by Nisargadatta Maharaj. The book is rated 4.8 stars on Amazon and 4.4 on Goodreads, so that’s pretty impressive.

After reading the first 100 pages or so, I’m glad to report personally that there isn’t anything significantly new here for me. Even though I never saw Ram Dass refer to Nisargadatta Maharaj, the words in this book are remarkably similar to those in Ram Dass’s best books, which I have already written about. That is, the words are a little different, but all of the concepts are the same, and they are consistent with what I know about meditation.

I’ve been working with ChatGPT lately to create images that go with “spiritual quotes,” and it created this image to go along with the Ram Dass quote, “Enlightened beings are pure awareness.”

Here are two favorite quotes from Anandamayi Ma. I think almost all of these quotes come via Ram Dass, but at the moment I can’t remember what book I saw this in. So at the moment, 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.

March 10, 2017: My immune system has been struggling the last two weeks since I had some bad Kroger yogurt. (The yogurt didn’t taste bad, but I got very sick within an hour of eating it.) Today I put a mala on my wrist like I have 10-15 times this year, and after a little while it felt like it was itching and burning. This is what my skin looked like almost half an hour after I took it off. I’m assuming that this is a result of the mast cell disease (MCAS).

Because of the MCAS I usually see a series of specialists and only see my primary care physician (PCP) once every year or two, but I had to go her office a couple of days ago. One of the benefits of going there is that she has this terrific view of the Rocky Mountains.

Buddha said, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

~ Michael Clark Duncan

I enjoyed the tv series, “The Finder”, it’s one of my favorite tv series that lasted only one season. I like pretty much everything about it, and loved the quotes from the character played by Michael Clark Duncan. RIP, MCD, you are missed.

If you ever wondered what life was about, here you go. From Leo (Michael Clark Duncan) in The Finder.

“Are you familiar with Sun Tzu?”

~ Michael Clarke Duncan, in a favorite tv show, The Finder

“The world is won by those who let it go.”

~ Lao Tzu (via The Finder)

In mindfulness meditation, “Stagnation is guaranteed if you cling to pleasant sensations.”

~ Daniel Ingram

November 3, 2020

Dear diary,

I got pretty sick this afternoon. That’s always been one thing about this body, if you push it, it will push back. Some of it may be mast cell related, some of it may be kidney related (some of my kidney numbers are not good currently).

Ended up sleeping from noon until 5pm. I have the heat turned up now, drinking warm fluids, and wearing a heavy shirt. When I laid down earlier I started having chest pain, so I took some Benadryl and that eventually went away, but then I slept.

I don’t remember how I first heard this, but I love this song named Runaway by Aurora.

As I update this post on December 16, 2023, I particularly like the lyrics, “Take me home, take me home where I belong.” (You get to a point in meditation that some people call “The Dark Night,” and I’ve been there for a while now, and I just want to finish the deed.)

A friend of mine who was been battling addiction told me that the most important thing for them once they were “triggered” was to get away from the trigger and also ask someone for help.

Additionally, they said that when they couldn’t do those things for one reason or another, they had certain phrases that they would repeat to themself. They even kept cards with them that they’d carry around.

One of the phrases went like this: “You CAN keep doing the same thing today, tomorrow, and every day until you die, or, you CAN choose to make a change right now.”