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Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? – Morpheus, The Matrix

How do you know that what you are experiencing moment to moment is actually real and not just a complex construct of your mind?

There is a thought in therapeutic community that we are not who we think we are and that we are all living in a massive trance state with only rare moments of being truly awake.

The theory goes that the problems you have, or think you have, are always about yourself.  You become the object of our problems. But in order to be the object, you have to be something; and that something is always an idea or a set of ideas.  The idea is only a suggestion of who you are, but it is not you.

For example you might look in the mirror and say I am fat, or I am not handsome enough, or host of other you might say about yourself.  In order for you to say you are fat, you must have in your mind a self-image of what you imagine you should like, an ideal self.  When this ideal self doesn’t match what you see in the mirror, then feelings of unhappiness or discontent follow.  Basically what you have done is tied your identity to the problem.

To liberate your identity from the problem ask yourself, “Who is the ‘I’ that is fat?� The ‘I’ or imagined ideal self is an illusion born of a myriad of personal, social, religious, and cultural influences.  You could, in theory, walk away from the illusion.  But then who would you be?

You can find out through a process of self-inquiry.  And a great place to start is by asking your self the question, “Who am I?�

What you will eventual find is that who you really are cannot be comprehended by thought.

One day you’re going to wake up and you’ll be dead.  All life is folly.  Your time here is transient.  From the moment you are conceived, the big countdown to the end starts ticking and you haven’t even tasted your first breath.  Life moves towards death.  It seems almost ludicrous to get attached to anything, or anyone, or to life itself for that matter.  Life is precious and precarious.  You can be snuffed out in a moment – the next moment or the moment after that.  Maybe you’re lucky and fate has arranged your cards such that you get to languish around into your 80s or 90s but you know what, you still die in the end.  The whole equation life = death, makes everything we do, everything we strive for or worry about, seem insane.  What’s the point?  Why go through all the trouble of trying to collect and hang onto all the scraps you fight for every day?  Why not just get naked and party hard?

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand – strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO – What a Ride!â€?  I can’t find the person who wrote that, he or she comes up as unknown.  They were probably to busy living hard to bother about leaving a note to get quoted!

I think I might be on the brink of becoming a hedonist.  It seems insane to do otherwise.  Why not get the maximum enjoyment out of life and do the things you want to do? Or as the Grateful Dead sang:

I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I’m enjoyin’ the ride
At least I’m enjoyin’ the ride
Yeah, at least I’m enjoyin’ the ride
Yeah

Saturday morning, I can see a little blue sky peeking through the drawn curtains of my front room.  The blue conjures a feeling of mountains and open spaces and I suddenly long to be outside.  I realise that I haven’t planned anything for the weekend apart from attending my daughter’s play on Sunday.  Usually if I don’t plan something, it means I will end up on the computer for most of the day with intervals of time spent reading or playing PlayStation with my son.

Creation…the greatest gift of life is expressed through our choices.  Through our choices we create our realities.  Shatter the illusion.  If our reality dissatisfies us, we are free to destroy it and begin again.  It is time to stop the ignorance. – Big Mountain

I went to my first barefoot boogie led by the magnificent Mandy Kasafir. Transcendental dance is a good way to describe it. Imagine a room full of people who share an interest in peace, harmony, respect and love for all life. Imagine this group of like-minded people moving their bodies in whichever way feels right to them in time and not in time with soul stirring, foot tapping music in a dimly lit room…that is a barefoot boogie

Joseph Campbell wrote: “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.  When you see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.  I say follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

I feel odd, but not odd.  Or rather I don’t want to feel odd because I have no reason to feel odd.  How odd is that?  I haven’t done anything physical today.  Perhaps that’s why I feel odd.  I finished reading The Dharma Bums for the second time.  And for the second time, I enjoyed the read.

I read the West Point Way of Leadership by Colonel Larry Donnithorne.  There were only a few useful nuggets in the book.  Most of it was a pep rally advocacy for West Point.  I am a West Pointer, so on the one hand the pep rally stuff is OK for an insider, but for useful leadership material to an outsider, it’s pretty weak.  I can’t believe the publishers tried to equate the book with the same level of importance as Sun Tzu.

I did like the prayer the other mentioned that one of classmates carries around in his wallet:

Care more than others think is wise
Risk more than others think is safe
Dream more than others think is practical
Expect more than others think is possible

All this reading on leadership has made me re-realise the importance of leadership in every day life or even leadership as a lifestyle and that even in my role as father I am a leader and need to act accordingly. I am the pack leader.

There’s a symposium tomorrow at the local Catholic college and the question on the table is: “Are morals a thing of the past?”

I can guess what the Catholic school is going to say, what’s your view?

I like to climb a mountain at the start of the year.  Yesterday, my friend Will and I climbed Mount Snowdon in North Wales. It is a mountain that I am intimately familiar with.
Snowdon is my temple and I go there to contemplate life, love, and the universe.  It was a perfect day to climb a mountain.  The weather was dry.  The sun was out.  The wind was cold and the mountain was covered with a light flooring of snow.

We talked about a great many things and the mountain, as high priest, listened with great patience to our confessions, our fears, our worries, and our dreams.  When we reached the top, the mountain baptized us with fierce wind and snow.  I felt my sins absolved.  And then the mountain sent us on our way with its blessings.

I am now ready to embrace the continuing adventure of life in 2008.

Amen.

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“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.â€? – Apple Computers

A samurai, a very proud warrior, came to see a Zen Master one day. The samurai was
very famous, but looking at the beauty of the Master and the Grace of the moment, he
suddenly felt inferior.

He said to the Master, “Why am I feeling inferior? Just a moment ago everything was
okay. As I entered your court suddenly I felt inferior. I have never felt like that before. I have faced death many times, and I have never felt any fear — why am I now feeling
frightened?”

The Master said, “Wait. When everyone else has gone, I will answer. ”

People continued the whole day to come and see the Master, and the samurai was getting
more and more tired waiting. By evening the room was empty, and the samurai said,

“Now, can you answer me?”

The Master said, “Come outside.”

It was a full moon night, the moon was just rising on the horizen. And he said, “Look at
these trees. This tree is high in the sky and this small one beside it. They both have
existed beside my window for years, and there has never been any problem. The smaller
tree has never said to the big tree, ‘Why do I feel inferior before you?’ This tree is small,
and that tree is big — why have I never heard a whisper of it?”
The samurai said, “Because they can’t compare.”
The Master replied, “Then you need not ask me. You know the answer.”

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

In keeping with the tradition to review the passing year, here are my 10 favorite posts of 2007:

1.  pursue your passion

2.  top five health benefits of regular sex

3.  reason is a whore

4.  pleasure is good

5.  life is a mind game

6.  smart girls do like sex

7.  who is this guy?

8.  and the dead poets go

9.  my talented torturess

10.  puddles

I got a call from the tree whisperer asking me if wanted to go spend some time in the forest with him and his sister.  One of the things I miss about the U.S. is being able to hike in the woods for days without ever seeing a road or clearing for miles.  In the UK, this is a rarity.

So when the tree whisperer asked me if I wanted to go to the Forest of Dean, I said yes, of course.

The tree whisperer was on a quest.  He was using the Christmas holiday to explore the few forests that remain in England.  He wanted to see what he could learn from the trees.

Trees remind of the Druids who were a class of Celtic priest who believed in the sacredness of trees.  They conducted their religious ceremonies in the open-air oak groves.  The word druid is said to be derived from the Celtic words for oak and truth du and druidh.

Of course the Romans painted the Druids as a nefarious group of long robe wearing men who sacrificed humans for the sake of trees.

We didn’t have a plan, or a map when we arrived at Parkend, which is situated at the southern end of the Forest.  There’s only one thing to do in those circumstances and that’s to pick a cardinal direction and start walking, but not before feasting on a couple of jam sandwiches.

We started north up a hardball road and then took the first cut in the woods we found.  After 10 minutes the rush of the road faded and was replaced with the soft quietness of damp woods.  Childhood memories of me wandering in the woods near our house drifted in and out of the smell of pine needles.

It’s been a few years since I’ve been in a woods this deep.  We walked for a few hours, stopping and playing along the way. When I was a kid, I used to wander in the woods and marvel at the abundance of flora and fauna.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the magic of the woods still alive.

Sadly, the shortness of winter days limited us to a few hours of frolicking in the trees.  When the spring comes, I plan to revisit the Forest and explore some more.

I’m in that inevitable twilight zone between Christmas and New Year. Mentally I am finished with 2007, but not quite yet ready for 2008, which leaves me in limbo.

I went for a short hike today, up into the hills to see the White Horse. In the afternoon I had some lovely haggis and then packed my truck up like the gypsy that I am and headed back to Bristol.

I’m contemplating going to the Forest of Dean tomorrow to hang out in the trees and see what they have to say.

Merry Christmas to everyone out there who celebrates Christmas as Christian holiday.  Happy holidays to everyone else whatever your religious or non-religious persuasion happens to be.  I’m celebrating the day with family and friends in Westbury.  There will be plenty of good cheer, plenty of eating, and plenty of gift giving.

As I am actually writing this on the 24th of December, I can’t tell you yet what presents I may or may not have gotten.  Plus I don’t know which list of Santa’s I made it onto in 2007.  I’d like to think I made it onto the nice list.  Hey but what’s nice to some people might be down right naughty to others.

Anyway, my friends, have a fantastic day whatever you’re doing.

Peace,

Clay

I’m officially on holiday. I initially thought I would take a break from blogging, but I have since decided that I will continue even on me hols because as I wrote in post 114 every day is a holiday.  I’m not a big Christmas fan, but I do use the time to just hang out with family, reflect on the past year, and decide where I want to go in the new year.

I picked this little gem from an email I received:

When the student is ready the teacher appears.
When the thinker is ready the idea appears.
When the artist is ready the inspiration appears.
When the servant is ready the purpose appears.
When the athlete is ready the performance appears.
When the leader is ready the vision appears.
When the lover is ready the partner appears.
When the disciple is ready God appears.
When the teacher is ready the student appears.
– Robert Holden

I finished reading The Average American Male and I thought what a grim commentary on the American Male psyche. What is even more scary is that Chad Kultgen isn’t far off the mark in describing what men think about most of the day, which I am sure you have already guessed, is sex, videogames and more sex.

I remember one hard-ass, male-hating female lieutenant colonel who started one of her presentation to a group of cadets with the startling statistic that the average male thinks about sex every 7 seconds. Is this true guys? Do we really think about sex that much?

Chad Kultgen’s main characters certainly lays bare this static. In every single chapter he is having sex, thinking about sex, watching porno, jerking off, or fantasizing about sex with every single female he sees. He tells his friend Todd that he would fuck 98% of the women he sees. You get the impression that the other 2% must be invalid or near-death in order to not warrant being considered for any kind of sexual intercourse.

The Average American Male is like a triple X-rated version of John Gray’s book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. In fact, I wish one of you ladies out there would write the female version of The Average American Male. I would welcome a read of The Average American Female. I would love to know what women really think about?

Chad Kultgen paints women as Venus Flytraps. The women in his book basically do what ever it takes to lure men in (re fuck them every way imaginable multiple times a day), make them feel all funny inside (re love), and then, when the guy is sedated with thoughts of endless blissful sex, suck the soul out of them with marriage and leave them bumbling, porn watching, jerking off husks of men.

I would like to believe this is not true, but history tells me different, biology proves it, and psychology shows all the crazy things a guy will do for those inevitable last few seconds of mind-blowing orgasmic sex.

Women were designed to attract and keep men. Men were designed to make babies. This is how the species of man survives.

Ok. I am digressing into my own psychotic shit. Back to the book. The Average American Male is as brilliant as it is vulgar. As Toby Young put it, “I can’t figure out if this book is a heartfelt dispatch from the front line in the battle of the sexes, or a brilliant send-up of the way the male point of view has been misrepresented by militant feminists.”

I enjoyed reading about myself however painful it is to admit that all I think about is sex, sex, and more sex. Fuck the videogames!