Hello and Hi!!

[algernon]

YO FARGIN!!

Glad to read you got "Flowers for Algernon" going......

I got this going: http://www.amazon.com/Just-One-Thing-De ... 1608820319.....a 4 CD package I listen to while trucking these last few days....I wanted to place the suggestion in this forum cuz I think it's a great instruction to augment my meditation and mindfulness practice.

Full title: "Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time"

I wouldn't spend too much time ruminating over wasted time in the 1990's Fargin.....or wasted time yesterday.....or worrying about how your healthcare needs 10 years from now (or next month) will be met. I assure you this advice is given with experience of one who knows how to waste huge time and worry about what was and isn't here yet......and the best way to tend that is to practice living in the present moment. The details of how and why can be found in the book posted above and from countless other learning sources dealing with meditation and mindfulness and Rational emotive behavior therapy......but it requires practice and trust in the process and I suppose the initial willingness to take a risk in the effort. I did and things are improving......

These days I feel like I have choices. Buddhism (for me it's the secular "flavor") teaches about "dukkhah"......the first of the four noble truths as taught by the fat man......which means "suffering" in terms that life is filled with it and the only way to live best is to accept it and realize lasting happiness comes from within only.....I'm not qualified to teach this, but I can sample out the simple principles......

Would you like to know, after about a year of practicing meditation/mindfulness, one measure of progress gained from my practice? If you do......

....I am just about always aware of my emotional state now.....subtleties and variations included.....where previously my moods were most often below consciousness and reactions rather than responses to events was my habit. I'm with peace in this improvement.....

I trust what I found and once more I cite someone in this forum who referenced Jon Kabat-Zinn and I took off reading that guy.....a beautiful man, he....and the forum member that hooked me up I am always grateful.....

So thank you for responding in this thread once more, Fargin......and to the Gilmartin management and everyone associated with this group, thanks too.....I get a chance to practice my typing sharing my mental health efforts. Yes I am not alone and surely most fortunate for the fellowship here......

I'm taking a little nap now....then the fireworks later....and some coffee....I overate with too much "fun food" this afternoon and I should do better, but I'll forgive myself for the holiday knowing that I eat with better choices when I'm working......

Fargin, both you and me (and everyone else).....we have all the time there is......

America, the US birthday today.....may more of us honor our nation with reality and the solutions that stand on reality and not the tired rhetoric creeched by polished knuckleheads so common in our media screen-scape. YUZ, says Mr. Deltoid .....

[algernon]

HELLO-AH!

Algernon here......loaded up with mostly ease and some strains of unease.......my meditation and mindfulness continues and resting from hard days trucking through environments that will CRUSH you and me......another day at the office they've been.....

My latest Internet fixation has been this gun nut chief of police in Pennsylvania....

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... bled=false

I don't want to invoke the 2nd amendment here (hoo boy!).....other than to say that I have two modest guns and I respect hunters (but I don't hunt) and I wish that the 2nd amendment wasn't so......ambiguous....and ambiguous it is if it's anything......after all why do you think people cannot AGREE on what it means?

I find comfort and promise in meditation and things of a wholesome self compassionate nature, social cooperation, peace on earth (and not just during the December holidays)......so in this posting, stemming from the nut police chief in the above article and those people that have emerged to rally around him, I want to cite my disdain for.......

......

......

..........................intimidating imagery!!!!

Look, I know my views are not going to change anything......and I surely don't expect them to......but holy mackerel do I feel better when I lay out some thoughts about life from my perch.....

Why oh why do people grab all this SKULL shit? Skulls, weapons (and weapons with all that custom shit on them.....lasers and flash suppressors and extra hardware and ribbing and all that RAMBO shit)......and skulls......and GARGOYLE sunglasses......and tattoos.....tattoos of skulls.....eye sockets and toothsome grimaces.......skulls skulls skulls.......and cigarettes and baseball caps.....with skulls on them.....and FIERCE LOGOS....or sports teams......and piercings......shock shit and posturing like the terminator......chrome and leather and high heels and rocket tits.....fierce makeup......and pounding music.......

....yea, yea.....maybe something's wrong with me. I first saw in the 1970's, a Mustang with cosmetic TEETH someone painstakingly put along the inside of the grill frame.......and now (though it seems to be waning) heavy trucks have that "add-on" look for their grills, which is a WONDERFUL thing to promote our business as professionally responsible......trucks weighing 40 tons traveling 70MPH with TEETH in the grill.......and here I am waiving to people from my own truck every chance I get to demonstrate a certain civic responsibility to operate in harmony with those around me.......

Oh mental pod people.....I am so disconnected by these images that I cite......

I don't want to scare you, or intimidate you, or take what you have be it your wife or your dollars......and I'm most always aware when the defense posturing is blindly nailed in place among the people I meet......I'm the only guy I know that waves to people in neighboring cars on the Cross Bronx Expressway.....and how many "good mornings" have I voiced with the recipient dead mute in return?

LOL! So who am I to question the SKULLS and leather and missile tits and tats and piercings, and calls for my eternity in hell because Jesus Christ the Lord of Ghosts and Virgins doesn't connect with my neurons?

The nice thing about meditating is that.............S-P-A-C-E............is achieved to use in these aspects of modern life that I cannot take for my own.........and as far as that nut police chief in the link above.......this is what the nation has spawned and those energies he will drive in the infinitely long string of events that brings us all to this moment.......well, I can always make the space that I need.

[algernon]

THE BEAVER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOSOWNS3jts

Tonight I took a chance on a film that moved me to post about it here. Please don't figure I'm recommending puppet projections for depression....but I did take the lesson that people need people when things don't go right. And that ironies of life happen. And frustrations happen. And those endless self composed dark embellishments that we wrap around most anything we hear so that even honest probability always holds our doom as we look ahead....that happens too.

Please. Let me take a breath....then another.

I actually sobbed a little with this film. It felt really good. I felt grateful for my girlfriend and began to think about all my elders that have now passed on and how the rest of the family moved far away and into their own lives......

Today I was with my best friend, Walter (age 92).....I'm 59.....as we drove to Home Depot discussing a few base things, I made an impulsive announcement, "the carefree days are over now." His age, my age, our little town changing both because of and besides Hurricane Sandy.....his health and mine.....change, change, change is simply taking place. It wasn't depressing at all this conversation, but it was sobering. You want to know how to live to age 92? Well, included in the feat is quitting the food that America and the world loves, including the average sugar consumption of an American.....you don't drink booze....and you eat bland and basic and portion controlled.....you exercise to what you can do as a limit and work problems out to keep your mind fit....for myself (Walt doesn't do this as least formally) I'll add mindfulness and meditation practice.....you steel up for who knows what self survival task you'll need to do. For Walt, it's occasionally installing a catheter, HIMSELF (full doctor consent)....for bladder relief due to prostate issues....he's gotten pretty skillful in doing it....Age 92 and drives and has a girlfriend and is involved in a building remediation project....age 92. Imagine the things you see over the dimension of time living that long! He gets slightly depressed now and then...then he sets a proper pace and gets busy and it passes. His calmness is majestic and obscure as he is in the world, he is a great man.

So for me, maybe I should marry or at least live in sin with my girlfriend because the next 10 years wont have the same trajectory as the last 10 years. That would mean moving to Long Island because she's not moving to the Jersey shore. It's not easy deciding as the clock keeps rolling faster and faster.....time does fly faster as you get older, trust me. And so...I must reflect.

About MIHH and the forum....I did enjoy the 'cast with Dr. David Hlrohama and I'm glad Mr. G is establishing the show as a pillar, I am! The forum is endless with beautiful humanity stated in the war for inner peace within a world of profiteering and designed injustice.....ambiguity is ours, it's the new Fukushima. (Fukushima??)

Thank you for the visit and take a moment for yourself often....breathe deeply and exhale slowly. Like a god.

[manuel_moe_g]

Knowing you are in the world, truckin' along, is a blessing. All the best to you, Algernon, please don't be a stranger!

[algernon]

HEY MANNY!!

Thanks for the sentiment.....

Is that YOU in that avatar? You look mighty fine....a nice looking man you.

Paul's podcast and web page is really rising into something meaningful. I'm glad. Very very.

Meanwhile, I hope you're doing good and better and trying new things.

For me, I'm fighting with the trials of life...reckoning the next stage of things...

I started running again. I'm working it slowly up to my modest distance from the peak years not too long ago....

Meditation and mindfulness continue to be a center for me, almost a year now....and grateful is me that in this forum I learned about Jon Kabat Zinn.

I wish I could bellow out some striking zingers about politics, Manny.....but I wont as I recall Mr. G's intention to keep that out of the mental health discussion or at least minimized greatly......(YO! I'm a fucking PEACENIK! )

And so....fall is here and almost 1 year since Hurricane Sandy took the Atlantic Ocean into my living room.....we got the full moon tonight here....the October full moon that last year was the cherry on the Sandy sundae.

Impermanence is reality. But for now we remain.....Algernon and his goomba Manny....swapping text in the happy hour of mentalics.....YUZza.....and be well.

[algernon]

Greetings on the week of Thanksgiving. Halloween is over and before that, the Christmas/Holiday season began, didn't it? Every year it gets launched earlier or that's what people always say......

I spent a lot of time watching people write commentary about Sarah Palin's Christmas book on Amazon.....(remember to buy from Amazon if you like to, using the portal on the home page of this website. It keeps a little cash flow coming in for the house).....and my take from Palin's book impressions is more hoopla about Christmas as she thinks it should be spent......and that's fine, but I don't see how anyone is stopping anyone else from spending Christmas in the approved manner of Ms. Palin.....and I don't have a problem when someone says "Happy Holidays!" or calls a Christmas tree a holiday tree....or if someone skips Christmas entirely as Muslims or Jehovah Witnesses or most Jews will do.....I don't think Palin's Christmas book is meeting with stellar success as those on the Amazon page refer to publishing industry disclosures for her book sales to date.....

That one Christmas maybe 23 years ago, after my very difficult marriage ended, I was single and determined not to spend it sitting in a bar somewhere so I arranged to volunteer in the local hospital. That was the start of a very well spent period in my life. I dated a few nice women and got to learn about the medical world. It began a volunteering tradition in my life that I continue today.

I'm an agnostic and a little bit of a George Carlin iconoclast.....and after experiencing some periods of significant material loss throughout my life, and determining the relentless force of the media and mass contagion from my fellow citizens regarding the insatiable frenzy for consumption PARTICULARLY at Christmas time leads not to happiness but to perpetual craving and disappointment.....well.....I backed off from the madness of the traditional American Christmas/Holiday season.....and made a few key adjustments.

I will not rant about quitting Christmas because I don't want to diss anyone that eats it up to the Madison Avenue max. Besides I do a sedate Christmas myself still, with my Jewish girlfriend who likes the frill more than I do, but she's still nominal about it all......

I've begun to think about all those lights at Christmas in an age of energy shortages and expense and carbon footprints......cognitive dissonance me because they are pretty....as the lights in Las Vegas and all the cities of the world at night are pretty.....but a widdle birdie whispers to me that mankind would be better to turn a few (quite a few) lights off so the planet has less waste instead of more fleeting amusement......bah humbug me, I know Sarah would scold.

STYLE is really important to people, particularly young people.....and wow does that sell at Christmas time! And new electronics! Hey! MA! I want a new STEREO!! LOL...my mother gave me one, one year for Christmas and I was sad because it was a knockoff brand with a hum at high volume....how unfair of my peer conditioning to hold that with ongoing disappointment back then.....it did serve me pretty well including the integrated 8-track player....and Mom is gone now as she died last year.....and how I would thank her now with a big hug for that stereo.....oh how we clad ourselves in such bullshit internal thinking, taking maybe an entire lifetime to realize it.....if at all.....

My mother worked so hard to put on a Christmas year after year.....she was a great cook....and often she would cry after a burst of anger yelling at her dinner guests....we'd all sit down to her holiday table feeling awkward and confused while she would sit and weep before entering the predictable sulking period that may or may not end before the last guest left.....it wasn't every Christmas Eve or Christmas day or Thanksgiving (she'd traditionally put these on as hostess for a sizable extended family) that she'd have one of these jags.....but it was half the time or less.....oh how I wish the hoopla was scaled back so Ma could be under less pressure......oh the fights we'd have, she and I.....but all that negative is far secondary to the love I will always have for her and the prime memory of her humor and compassion and comfort she was so capable of giving me and others too.

So Christmas Season is here.....whenever it really did start.....and people are happy and sad, stressed and looking to cash in, tired from working at it and charged for the party time it is and to be....Christmas religion happens too....and so does overspending....and borrowing.....and no one's gonna stop it.

The thing is to take it all in the way that best suits you, keeping in mind that we are social creatures meaning that other people are in the equation too. Make a decision to set self compassionate boundaries for this period. We all know about the effect this time of year has on one's spirit......be well and eat something good for yourself (my Mom says!).....and travel with a sense that alcohol and driving must be kept apart.