Posts in the “personal” category

“Have you got any cookies?”

~ Frank Burns, in M*A*S*H

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.

Some day I might write a book called, Random Conversations with Strangers While Aimlessly Wandering Around, and it will include stories like this:

Many years ago I walked into a favorite bakery in Alaska. Nobody was there, no customers or employees, so I took a few minutes to look over the cookies and donuts to decide what I wanted.

Finally a young woman came out of the back room. I knew from previous donut/cookie runs that she was born in Ohio, moved here about five years ago, was nineteen years old, and would be twenty in a few months. As she brought out a tray of something new, she said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

I replied it was no problem, it gave me a chance to think about what I wanted. We chatted for another minute or two and then she looked around and said, “Can I be honest with you?”

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 book you can 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.

A funny moment from the tv series Life: “Did he ever have a head injury?”

A good line from a good movie.

As a brief note today, I have been reading the Bhagavad Gita (translated by Jack Hawley) lately, and he shares this good line that relates to desire, attachment, and even addiction:

“Realizing the truth of your True Self is your principal weapon for eradicating desire.”

My short interpretation of that is that our True Self is not our physical body, but something else that you might call awareness, consciousness, the subtle body, the soul, or the Atma, AND, it is possible through yoga, mindfulness, and meditation practice to get in touch with (feel/experience) your True Self. And then, once you realize who you are, your attachments to the physical world will go away.

I used to have a friend who was an addict, and I know she was always looking for anything that would help, so I hope this quote can be helpful for others.

I debated about whether or not to share this story publicly, but I think it may potentially be helpful for two groups of people, so I’m sharing it here. First:

1. For victims of parental abuse, I want you to know that you’re not alone, and that your feelings (anger, disappointment, fear, unworthiness, lack of self-confidence, etc.) are perfectly normal.
2. Second, for people who meditate, I want to let you know that both good and bad memories can pop into your mind spontaneously as your meditation practice advances.

And now for the brief story:

Everyone tells me that the cardiologist I see is the best heart doctor in Boulder, Colorado, so on Thursday we were talking and I was telling him that it looks like I was born with a rare blood disease named mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and said, “So maybe that fake heart attack I had last May may have been allergic angina, you know, Kounis Syndrome. If we had known about MCAS at that time I might not have needed that angiogram, yada yada yada.” Then he said, “Wait, what was the name of that disease?”

At first I was upset that he didn’t know what this was, but then I realized how rare mast cell disease is. Statistically there are only 26 other people in Colorado with this disease, and if I was still in Alaska there would only be three or four of us. (FWIW, this is the same doctor who knew what a Pheochromocytoma is, and told me to get to the Mayo Clinic asap when my bloodwork made doctors think that I had a Pheo.)

The good news is that I was able to give him all of the information I have on mast cell disease and Kounis Syndrome, so hopefully in the future he can try giving patients who present unusually some Benadryl and see if that helps. (I started to write, “Give them Benadryl instead of an angiogram,” but the stress test showed a possible dead spot in my heart, so I was getting that angiogram one way or another.)

(This image comes from the book, Never Bet Against Occam: Mast Cell Activation Disease.)

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.

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 knew a few people in Colorado who was struggling with 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.

Ram Dass’s best books

IMHO, I think the following books are his best, where I believe best will also depend on a person’s experience with his writings and teachings, and also their own progress on the spiritual path.

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.

Here’s an old mug from the Sundance Club, in College Station, Texas, circa 1985 or so. If you happened to go to school at Texas A&M back then, you may recall the Sundance Club, which was in the Hilton Hotel.

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.