Posts in the “personal” category

Ram Dass FAQ: What is the best Ram Dass book to start with?

My answer: The best Ram Dass book to start with is ...

I wrote this in my earlier blog post, What Are The Best Books By Ram Dass, but I believe the best Ram Dass book to start with is Polishing The Mirror.

I think this book is the best summary of all his work. It’s a relatively short book, it’s clearly written, and summarizes much of what you’ll read in his other books. I started reading this when I was in the hospital, and as bad as I was feeling at the time, it just blew me away. I like to underline and highlight text, and I felt like I could highlight most of the book.

If you ever wondered what the theme song is from The Dead Zone tv series, it’s a song called New Year’s Prayer, by Jeff Buckley.

I haven’t looked into the details, but somehow the song New Year’s Prayer was released on an album almost a year to the date after Mr. Buckley died, drowning in the Mississippi River.

I keep thinking about this lately, so I thought I’d post a list of my favorite tv series that lasted only one season. In no particular order they are:

• The Finder
• Raines
• Firefly
• Limitless
• The Tomorrow People (the 2014 series)

“He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once, and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.”

~ A quote from Arthur Schopenhauer,
read by Steve Jobs,
as found in the book, How Google Works

In terms of heat and humidity, Kentucky has all the benefits of living at the ocean. :)

Here’s one more quote from Michael Piller’s book, Fade In. I think I read that Stephen King and other writers write a similar amount, usually five to ten pages a day. Many beginning writers try to sit down and write an entire book at once, but it’s important to know that writing is more of an endurance contest, not a sprint. Also, when you get tired not only does your productivity drop, but your creativity plummets.

This was from a thoughtful gift back in the day. :)

I got a “chemo ninja” t-shirt like this one when I was recovering from thyroid cancer. Think I’m gonna need a new one after they remove part of my digestive system in about ten days.

I don’t know the original source of this image or quote, but I like it.

This is a bit of an unusual note, even for me :), but if you’re ever laying in bed and feel like someone or some thing has gotten in bed with you — but they’re not really there — you may already be asleep and not know it, or you may be having a hypnagogic hallucination.

For instance, last night in bed, while I was waiting to fall asleep, I was practicing a “witness-ing” meditation technique that I have learned. So I’m doing that as intensely as I can, just witnessing my body breathing, and then someone gets in bed with me. So then I realize that I’m probably in the usual “mind awake, body asleep” situation that I have been in a few thousand times in my life.

When I was younger I used to experience sleep paralysis a lot, but these days I can usually just wake myself up, and that’s what I did last night.

I think of this as being asleep and then waking myself up, but other people might say, “No, you must have been having a hypnagogic hallucination.” Personally, I’m about 99% sure that I am asleep, because I was able to do the same thing during an fMRI many years ago, and also during a sleep study test where the tester thought I was asleep because of my brain waves, but I was actually awake.

I have often thought that the story of The Odyssey is about temptation and maybe even addiction. And just now I saw this story from the Daily Stoic titled, Discipline Now, Freedom Later, and it offers an interesting take on self-discipline that starts like this:

“At a critical moment in The Odyssey, Odysseus tied himself to the mast of his ship because he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist steering the ship toward the beautiful sound of the Sirens. In temporarily giving up his freedom, Odysseus became the first person ever to hear the Sirens without fatally crashing into the rocks surrounding the island where they lived.”

The story goes on with another quote: “The labor will pass, the rewards will last.”

In a brief personal note, here’s a story about how “Pain is the Doorway.”

One of my favorite songs of late is named Mad As A Hatter, by Larkin Poe. The song is about their grandfather, who has schizophrenia, and their grandmother, who has dementia.

All my life I have known someone who has schizophrenia, and in the last 20 years I’ve also known quite a few people who had dementia and/or Alzheimers, so it’s a touching song in multiple ways. YouTube has this terrific live performance of “Mad as a Hatter”.

Here are some of the lyrics from Mad As a Hatter:

If you must then just please wait and let me have some time
(Let me have some time)
Please don’t come for me
Mind over matter (it don’t matter) when you’re as mad as a hatter

The song ends with these repeated lyrics:

Off with her head, off with her head...
Paint the roses, paint the roses...

I assume the ending lyrics relate to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This is a picture of a beautiful painting named Window of the Poet, by Pyotr Konchalovsky. A friend of mine who died a few years ago liked this quite a bit, so it reminds me of her.

I came across this “Al’s Oasis” sign while traveling around the country. I don't remember what state it was in.

In my earlier posts on the best Ram Dass book to start with and the best Ram Dass books I know, I didn’t mention his book, Grist for the Mill.

Since I forgot to mention it, today I’d like to note a few things about it. First, I think it’s a really good book, it’s just not the first Ram Dass book I’d recommend.

US Magazine has a little story on the separation of Coldplay singer Christ Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow, and it includes this quote about Rumi’s The Guest House and a book called Man’s Search for Meaning (by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl) that I read almost thirty years ago. (I don’t know too many Coldplay songs, but I do like Clocks.)

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere;
They are in each other all along.

~ Rumi

Listen with ears of tolerance.
See through the eyes of compassion.
Speak with the language of love.

~ Rumi

Dear diary,

Annihilation of the ego continues to make progress, at least during sleeping hours. In recent nights I’ve gained awareness during the dream state to find “myself” as animals, women, and other men.

Last night I gained awareness as an older black man, talking to other black men about some of the discrimination and injustices we’ve gone through in our lives. We can laugh a little amongst ourselves about them now, but I could feel that under the laughter there’s also a deep sadness and pain.

Lately each nightly occurrence ends the same way: Eventually there’s a realization that “I” am supposed to be “Al,” and that realization startles me, pulls me from the scene, and wakes me.

Yours truly,
The Hopefully-Disappearing Self

P.S. — I don’t know if it’s more correct to say “black man,” “African-American,” or something else. To be clear, if it wasn’t important to the story I would not mention it at all.