It’s not the one drink itself I fear. It’s the thought that one drink will be alright. It wont.
The thought that everything is ok now, and one drink is achievable. This is the deceit, the step into a hole that could be a puddle or a step off a skyscraper.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
-Leonardo Da Vinci
“There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it and you will be happy.”
-Christopher Isherwood
“Tomorrow’s life is too late. Live today.”
-Martial
I Trust.
Under me, there is granite. Solid, ground.
No matter the turbulence of the storm, there is ground under me.
I must trust, so that I may stand.
If I must weather the challenges, I trust they are necessary for me to accomplish and complete the righteous goal.
I Trust.
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive–the risk to be alive and express what we really are.”
-Don Miguel Ruiz
You are always affecting yourself, and your surroundings. Everytime you do, or dont do something, you are directly causing the results you experience.
I’m not in control of my life
You are the decision maker. Whether you like it or not, that’s the deal. All decisions about your life fall ultimately square on your shoulders.
I dont have the right to do what I want to do
Hey, this is your ilfe. Nobody else can live it for you. Not your parents, not your teachers, not your friends, not your kids. Exclusive rights to do what you want, belongs to you. Your life, your rights.
I dont deserve to be happy.
You damn skippy you deserve to be happy. Why not? Why would someone else deserve happiness, and not you? As far as we can tell, every happy person on this planet is still a human being, just like you. They are the same species as you. If they can be happy, so can you. If they have the right, so do you.
I cant change things
Of course you can. People have been changing things throughout recorded human history. People have changed things about themselves, things about others, and things about the world. Society would still be living in caves, building fires every night, if humans couldn’t change. You are the same as everyone else in that respect, you can change things.
I can only do so much
Yes, you can. And you can do even more than that. There is no limit to what you can accomplish. The only limits that exist are the ones you accept. Every “limit” has its answer, its resolution. Its antidote.
A rhinoceros instinctively stamps out fires in the wild. S/he will run to it out of nowhere to put it out.
You may have heard the phrase “Power perceived is Power acheived.” This is essentially correct, however grossly misused. When people use this phrase, they usually mean “Power perceived (by others), is Power acheived (within yourself).” Using that phrase in this way is erroneous, and will never lead you to true power. Rather, “Power perceived (within), is Power acheived (within).” True power only sprouts from within, and the way others perceive you will be a testament to exactly how much power you perceive within, yourself. And there is no end to it. Remember, dig deeper, and all you’ll find is more to find…you are a creation of the infinite…you are literally made of infinite parts, it is impossible to count your particles!
Your brain allows you to realize this, and when you realize that you are an infinite being, you realize that your potential is infinite as well. There is no limit to what you can do, because there is no limit to you!!!
“You cant judge them because you’re not in their shoes, and even if you were you cant judge them because you’re judging yourself”
The gamble of alcohol is just too much of a risk. I can have 20 times that I drink and everything works out well, I make people laugh, and have productive time. But the close calls are just too close. If I lost the gamble, I am completely screwed, and it’s a different life.
If the odds are 80% good night drinking, and 20% very bad night drinking, I cant afford to have a bad night drinking. It’s a game I cant even play.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
-Lao Tzu
“Mastering others is strength.
Mastering yourself is true power.”
-Lao Tzu
“Meditate on knowing and not knowing, on existing and not existing. Then leave both aside so that you may be.”
-Shiva
Recognition is key
Success is a decision away. I’m going to do it, that’s it, period
Imagining to do it. That’s it, period
“Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of hemp fields?”
-Henry Ford
“Mind itself is the mind that leads mind into confusion.”
-Ryokan
“The True Path is meeting your eyes even now. Just attend to what is actually going on–but keep it simple and keep it clear. Just open your wisdom eye and see.”
– Steve Hagen
“Spring blossom.
Cuckoos in the hills.
Autumn leaves.
These will be my legacy.”
-Ryokan
You know how people say we only use 10% of our brain? Or something like that? In a way it’s true. Your brain is chugging all day and all night, whether you know it or not. So it is actually working, the thing is most people dont direct it in an efficient manner, so much of it is working on something other than what you would like.
Martin Bayne speaks about partaking in “assisted living” on NPR (National Public Radio)
Assisted Living snip part1 – 2min 30sec
Assisted Living snip part2 – 4min 14sec
it’s a slower process, generally, and I’m allowed to kind of take part of it.
This woman that died last week, I went into her room that night and sat with her, holding her hand, and she died the next morning while her son was by her bedside. And I talked to her son and gave her son a hug, and I’m much more – I guess relaxed is a word I have to use again, about my own death. When it comes, it comes. And whatever happens happens.
I’m told that 100 billion people have died up to this point in time on our planet, and none of them have come back to complain, and so it can’t be that bad.
(LAUGHTER)
TERRY: So how did you become the person who goes in and holds the hand of the person who’s dying?
BAYNE: Because I wanted to. I wanted to be there, and people know it. I make an attempt when anybody new comes into the building to introduce myself to them immediately. And when people are coming to an assisted living facility, it’s typically after a trauma in their life: They just lost a spouse; they have some terrible disease; or they’re in a stage of dementia where they can’t live by themselves.
And it can be frightening for people at that age to come in and all of a sudden have to deal with all this foreign, new stuff. So I make it a point to go right up and introduce myself. And I think that my philosophy that it’s the small things in life, the very small things, that mean the most. That too has given me a certain position, if you want, in the community.
And I think my age, too, people just kind of scratch their heads and look at me sometimes. But I love the community I’m in. It is my home, and the people there, no matter how demented or how sick, or whatever wrong with them, I feel that my responsibility to make their journey while still on this planet as joyous and fulfilling as possible.
TERRY: So something about your background that I’d like to bring up, you spent five years, I think, living in a Buddhist monastery on the West Coast.
BAYNE: Close, four or five years, yeah.
TERRY: Four or five years. And were you in a Jesuit monastery for a time, too?
BAYNE: I was in a Benedictine Catholic monastery for a year.
TERRY: Oh, for a year.
BAYNE: For a year, yeah.
TERRY: So I’m wondering if the things that you learned there about meditation, contemplation, are helping you at this stage of your life and helping you live in an assisted living facility, in an atmosphere that some people might find very depressing, you know, because people are so much older than you are and so much, you know, closer to death and often more seriously impaired – and so on.
BAYNE: You know, the Buddha said – I wasn’t there obviously to hear him, but I’m told he said that life isn’t permanent. And the time that I spent as a monk in both monasteries was without a doubt the most productive, powerful period of my life. And I owe, I believe, everything to the training that I received in both monasteries.
Zen is not that far from Catholicism. I was at the Benedictine monastery, and they encourage their monks to be rather eclectic when it comes to religious beliefs. They’re obviously Christian. But one of the monks had built a small Japanese tea ceremony room. And I was reading a book one day from – it was in the room. And it said the Buddha had learned how to turn the stream of compassion within.
And I dropped to my knees and started to weep. It never occurred to me that one could turn the stream of compassion within. Sometime later I was on a plane to California to the Buddhist monastery to try and find out how does one do this. How does one love themselves? How does one give oneself the benefit of the doubt?
TERRY: How does one give to oneself the compassion that would come naturally when it came to caring for other people.
BAYNE: Exactly because in my experience, Terry, this is all in a mirror, and how you treat yourself and how you treat other people is identical, identical. The love and affection that you have for other people is only as much as you can afford for yourself. It was like a homecoming. I had forgiven myself, Terry, of all the things that I had done that I didn’t think I should have done, of all the things I wasn’t I thought I should be. I accepted them.
And when that happened, it’s indescribable, really, that something so simple as accepting yourself, turning the stream of compassion within, yet it’s such a powerful gift. And not to just myself but to all those now I come in contact with.
TERRY: Well, it’s really been good to talk with you. I appreciate you making the trip to a radio studio so we could speak over microphones to each other so that the audience can hear you well. Thank you so much. Thank you for talking with us.
BAYNE: Terry, it was my pleasure.
TERRY: Martin Bayne is a resident of an assisted living facility because of Parkinson’s disease. He wrote an article about life there in Health Affairs, which was excerpted in the Washington Post. You’ll find a link to both, as well as a link to his new blog, and his literary journal on our website freshair.npr.org. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
Here is full interview from NPR
Bullets in a Revolver
Drinking is like a
revolver, with bullets
in some, you dont know
how many bullets and you
dont know how many
chambers,
You prob get a feel for the
# of bullets + chambers based
on Karma, or your actions
So you are born. That’s happened to us all. Well some say Jesus was ‘begotten,’ but you were most likely born.
Now what? You go thru life. You choose what to do, every second of everyday.
Some may think that they do not have a choice, but really ‘choice’ is a fundamental part of our existence.
You exercise choice all your life. we may think we have no choice in certain things, go to school, go to family gathering, sell drugs to make ends meet.
Who’s In Charge?
Who was born? You were born. You were born and put in charge of your body, and mind. Who is at the helm? Who controls the motor functions of your body? And the subject matter of your mental focus? You do. You are in charge of yourself. You decide how + when to move muscles, you decide what to put your mind onto.
Like it or not, you are in charge of your mind and body. I would hope you like it, because with such tools, the human mind and body, you can steer yourself any way you like.
You are in charge of these things, you have the potential to be in control of these things. We are born this way, so that those would become under our control. Does it make sense any other way? Are we meant to be in control of ourselves? Are you meant to be in control of yourself?
You must always be willing to learn, because when you stop learning you also stop growing
“One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”
-Salvador Dali
“The friction method…depends on the fact that two pieces of wood rubbed together at speed will generate enough heat to produce carbonized particles and sparks, which will ignite a ball of dry tinder. The trick lies in not only getting the correct technique but also having the right mindset. You will probably come to understand this when you learn to make fire, and it is also true of other techniques of survival.”
“Doubt is not a very agreeable status, but certainly is a ridiculous one.”
-Voltaire
electrons exist in state of pure vibrating possibility
The external doesnt necessarily have to directly affect you to be influenced. Like a Full Moon. The Full Moon doesnt physically have to turn people into monsters, or somehow change how they act. People will look at the sky and say “Oh look, it’s a Full Moon tonight, let’s do something crazy!” People do it themselves. And police reports will tell you that crime and wayward behavior generally increase on a Full Moon. But regardless of any direct affects of the moon itself, people will change their own behavior, their own thoughts and actions, solely on the fact that the moon is full, and what that means to them.
Your brain is very much like a lump of clay, where you can actively mold it to be whatever you want. With time and effort, your brain will take the form of anything you can imagine. The brain of a hero, the brain of a writer, the brain of a president…anything you can imagine, you can become. The brain is your tool, your physical tool that creates these realities.
The brain has to work this way, otherwise humans could have never come as far as we have. We needed to adapt and transform ourselves into what was necessary to survive, succeed, and excel/surpass.
When you change your brain, your brain changes you. It changes how you think and how you act. These in turn change your life. To grasp full control, you must be aware of the status of your brain, how it is being shaped in this moment, and if this coincides with the results you wish to have.
Remember, your brain is modifiable like clay, not permanent like concrete. Every day the brain changes. You might as well learn to use it.