Category: My Life

Time for a change!

Jon11 Comments

I fit the stereotype of the computer geek who lives mostly in front of a screen, at work because it’s my job, and at home because it’s fun. However, this lifestyle has its price… I’m fat, or as the Department of Health would put it, clinically obese.

I’ve lost the weight twice before… in 1989, I began exercising (and stayed with it till it started becoming enjoyable) and cut most of the junk I previously called "food" out of my diet. I began to feel better than I ever felt in my life, than I ever knew it was possible to feel. In Ohio, I found intense exercise difficult to keep up during the long winter , so over the years some of the weight came back, but it wasn’t too bad.

However, when I discovered the Web in 1995, my physical activity level plummeted. Pounds began piling on quickly. I was able to take them off once again in 1999-2000 when I did the wretched Atkins’ diet, with the predictable result afterwards. Since then, my inactivity and eating habits have mostly gotten worse. I need a lifestyle change.

Of course, I’ve known that for years, and not yet been motivated enough to DO it.  But something interesting is going to happen: at work, some of us have agreed to play "The Biggest Loser" amongst ourselves… and a few side bets on it kind of sweetens the pot, in a non-caloric way!

An American with bad eating habits is up against some formidable obstacles–there is more at work that simply weakness vs. willpower. Some of these obstacles might better be called dark forces… There are the demons of self-doubt, etc. (although I’ve kicked that one’s ass back to hell!)  Then there are demons that twist minds in corporate boardrooms away from quality and towards hooking people into greater and deeper addiction to worse and worse food. I watched Spurlock’s movie, Super-Size Me again tonight for added motivation and inspiration.  Yes, it gave me that, but it also made me cry.

They are not only wrecking our own health on a nation-wide scale, but exporting insanity and obesity to the rest of the world. When there’s a MacDonald’s in every Baghdad neighborhood, then we can rest assured that Iraq has been defeated as soundly as we have.

So the challenge I face isn’t merely of calories and motion, but also of faith and spiritual warfare, that thing that spiritual warriors train for. It’s about overhauling myself. I’m remembering that St. Paul said "Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold," and I want to take that to heart… I’m going to practice meditation again regularly, which I haven’t done for a long time. There are habits I must break, and others I must form. It’s time for  a change.

 

Snapping out of it

Jon3 Comments

I’m a pretty happy guy, but around the middle of the week I got hit by a several days of sadness that seemed to be triggered by nothing in particular, and about nothing in particular. But it was strong and very sad. Usually I’m able to quickly nip in the bud things that pull me down… I make my co-workers (and myself) laugh by cursing my computer as a "stupid piece of electronic excrement" when something doesn’t go as expected.

But this was kind of like the dementors of Harry Potter (though thankfully, on a much less intense scale)… joy just seemed to be taken away, and replaced with nothing at all. Now, it’s back, and I’m very glad. Funny how you don’t really appreciate what you have till you don’t.

Coming Down

Jon5 Comments

 

eyes

 
 

Jan 22, 2006 was a dramatic experience for me. In a way it was freeing, but it also messed me up a bit, and I imagine the problem has to do with my constant thinking. My search for Truth (note the capital) has been largely bound up with concepts… a quest for the RIGHT thing to know. This is an error which my teacher helps me with, but old habits die hard, and perhaps old mental habits die particularly hard for intellectuals—at least that’s what I tell myself.

The "empty holodeck" that I experienced that day plainly showed me that "Truth" is empty, but my attachment to the conceptual search caused me to feel somewhat empty since then… I don’t mean that I’ve been depressed or anything, but things have been, well, different, and rather than being freed by the pure and simple emptiness of the mental answer, it’s been somewhat frustrating for me. My mind wants there to be a "there," there.

And many of my postings have reflected my attempts to make sense of what is beyond sense… While briefly comforting or mentally entertaining, the delusion has persisted… there is the Answer out there… the Experience… Enlightenment.

I may be "coming down" now… finally starting to learn that "This" is what counts, not "That." What’s important is this present moment, and this present place. God is here so we can see him… the most ardent atheist loves God if he or she loves anyone. All the human forms are moving… here, there… As windsocks give visibility to the movements of the air, so bodies give visibility to the movement of God.

More later.

National What-Writing Month?

Jon5 Comments

I learned recently that National Novel Writing Month is upon us. Every November, thousands sign up publicly for the challenge of writing a short novel, (or at least 50,000 words of a longer one) at nanowrimo.org. The challenge is inspiring, and I was tempted to go for it myself, especially since I actually do have a unfinished draft lying around on the ol’ hard drive.

But last night, as I was just about to click Yes to the challenge, a dose of reality hit me… finish this novel is actually very low on my list of priorites… What I really want to do this month is to further my skills with C#, XML, and OOP on the techie side (which I’m finally starting to make some progess in), as well as studying Esperanto,  and of course,  continue my exploration of the "Wild Things of God". I also want to blog more and process some of the things I’ve experienced recently, and to translate my "spirituality" pages into Esperanto.

But the spirit of the NaNoWriMo challenge might still be able to help me though. I’m committing to writing a blog post every day in November.  It’s possible that not all of them will be on this site… if you’re interested in my techie side or in Esperanto, also check WildWebWeaving.com and the Esperanto Club of Hampton Roads. At any rate, expect a bit more activity on this site in November.

Tien, and a few other notes

Jon4 Comments

I’m reading my first novel in Esperanto, now, a book called Tien, by Claude Piron, under the pseudonym "Johano Valano." It’s ostensibly a science-fiction story, but really it’s about spiritual transformation… really surprising how some of the (co)incidences are lining up between things in my world and it right now… kind of like the movie "23."

The "subtle lesson" is continuing. I’ll write more about that soon, after I do enough processing to figure about how to put it into words.

And a question… are phone books now a complete waste of paper? Two different stacks of phone books have been delivered to my apartment building. I think one person (out of the six of us) has picked up theirs. I haven’t—I’m not even sure I ever used a phone book last year… what about you?

A subtle lesson

Jon9 Comments

Sometimes the difficulty of blogging is that what seems blog-worthy is so subtle, it’s very difficult to express. That’s what’s been going on with me, recently. Nothing big, dramatic, or exciting. Subtle things.

For instance, I had an experience recently with getting off on a bad start one morning having to listen to a political discussion that deeply offended me. Now, I can discuss religion with Fundamentalists, atheists and Wiccans, but politics, I can’t discuss, period, except for close friends, and even that can be very challenging for me. So, I was greeted to a political discussion at the beginning of the day dominated by a couple of loudmouth opinionbags whose presence I find intolerable when they’re in "rant" mode. I don’t join in such discussions, even when there’s a certain level of mutual respect and freedom to express one’s opinions–and honestly, there was then.

Except that I was the one that lacked mutual respect. The others might not have respected my opinion, but they do respect me. But when  certain politics comes up, I lose respect for the holders of those points-of-view themselves. And so, the day started progressing, with me despising some people I didn’t want to despise.

Soon a realization came to mind. It was something that Thich Nhat Hahn had once written, but I experienced it internally, as something I knew, not as something to consider: If I had had the same experiences, I would have the same views. I mean all the same experiences, (and only those): genetics, environment, reading, travels, past-life experiences and karma, etc. There is nothing in me that was different than which was in them.  Well. no room for despising after that.

I want so much to believe that I am "special:" The ego  frames us with a smoke screen that looks strong enough to hang a picture on: Because I believe my opinions, my politics, and POV is right, I’m bolstered into feeling "I" am right. And if I am, you definitely ain’t.

Every now and then, grace blows the smoke away.

An Experiment

Jon11 Comments

"Your life is your practice." The masters all say it. My teacher says it, Socrates said it to Dan in Peaceful Warrior, Tolle teaches it in his books. St. Paul taught the principle (Whatever you do, do as for the Lord). The list goes on.

And yet for me, it’s been hard to resist a certain escapism in my spirituality. I think I might know the reasons for this, but it’s certainly related to the fact that in everything, my attention is almost always divided between a "here" and a "there." The emphasis on the present moment seems sometimes a hopeless ideal… I’ll be thinking about being in the present moment rather than just being in it right now. My mind creates a meta-reality that often feels more natural for me than simple Isness. And regarding my life as practice, I’ve got to say my life would not strike anyone as being marked by any degree of consciousness or mastery at all.

I procrastinate like crazy. I have huge avoidance issues when it comes to something I "have" to do, particularly if it’s "uninteresting." I’ve tried many times to get a handle on this… listening and reading the self-help masters, trying to be "more disciplined" (whatever that means), and so forth.  So many of their ideas have so much merit, yet my mind still ends up enticing me away from my life.  In the Zen ox pictures, that’s illustrated by the mind (the ox) leading the person.There’s always something more interesting to do than this, always somewhere other to be than right now.

This weekend, as I was catching up on a massive stack of overdue mail, I wondered: What would it be like if I found whatever I need to do fascinating? What if I really accepted that there’s no "escape" (and no need for one)? What if I were devoted to living my life well, with full devotion and attention? To some of you this may seem so obvious as to nearly be incomprehensible… how could anyone not actually take their life as their foundation for what they will do?  But for me, this is a radical experiment. I’m practicing being fascinated by what I need to do.

More later.

Dear Madeleine

Jon6 Comments

Madeleine L’Engle has passed on. Although really the most appropriate thing to say would be “Congrats!”, I do find my eyes getting a bit moist thinking about it. Why? Well, that’s a long story, but I’ve got plenty of time.

Let’s wrinkle back in time to about nine years ago. I was still a new convert to Catholicism and was just beginning to really deliberately follow a Christian mystical path. A friend of mine whom I hadn’t spoken with for a long time asked me to think what was the one thing that got me onto this path. There were so many factors affecting me in the few years before that—discovering Jesus’ call for social justice, reading The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, and having had a crash-and-burn experience with some distorted beliefs. I answered that there wasn’t any one thing, but I continued to think about it for the next few days. Yeah, it was true that there wasn’t any ONE thing, but many, but there was one author who really cleared the way for me to be more receptive to everything that I would later encounter. Her name was Madeleine L’Engle.

To understand that, let’s wrinkle further back in time to around 1972 or so. There’s this fifth-grade kid—let’s call him—well, “Jon.” Jon’s considered a bright lad and shows a bit of creativity—likes to draw, loves to read—but he seems a bit one-sided; all of the books he checks out from the library are about animals, science or geography. One day, much to Jon’s chagrin, his teacher forces him to read a fiction book. He protests that he doesn’t want to, but she insists. Later, at home, he reads “It was a dark and stormy night…” and soon encounters worlds in A Wrinkle in Time which he couldn’t have dreamed of otherwise.

Over the years, many things happened to Jon, but one thing Jon doesn’t lose is his imagination. As well as becoming a born-again Christian, he becomes an avid science-fiction reader, and always has a conviction that there’s more to life than what meets the eye… He even comes across a couple of books that suggest that science and spirit aren’t entirely separate things (The Dancing Wu Li Masters, The Tao of Physics), and later, he finds a book that truly ignites his soul, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.

To his delight, this was by her, the woman who wrote A Wrinkle in Time so long ago. In it, she explained to Jon what it was like being a Christian who couldn’t accept the limitations on love that the Church so often placed, nor its frequent distrust of the imagination,   of science, and changing understandings of reality. She described a kind of faith going back centuries (she specifically mentioned the Cappadocian Fathers), a kind of faith that amazed Jon for he had never heard of it before, a kind of faith that he would later call “Christian mysticism.”

(Wrinkle forward)
No, there wasn’t one thing. And there were many, many other authors who influenced me besides this kindly gray-haired lady who seemed to breathe out books like she breathed in God, who even made titles that were poetry and initiations in contemplation: A Circle of Quiet, A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, A House like a Lotus, The Young Unicorns. Yes, many others, but I wonder what my life would have been like if I had not encountered L’Engle’s soulscapes in the forms I did at the times I did. God has his ways, but I’m sure it would have been quite different. Thanks largely to Madeleine, I enjoy science-fiction and fantasy not as mere escapes, but as expressions of truth where it’s not quite the same thing as fact.

 

Dear Madeleine,

Congratulations on your new home. I hope you really enjoy it, and you deserve some time off. But don’t get too cozy there. C’mon back soon and give us some more. We need you.

Love,

Jon

 
 

Language rules my life.

Jon2 Comments

I told my teacher today that my life has become language. In addition to studying ASP.net, “classical” ASP, OOP, and C#, my boss asked me a few days ago to become an expert in XML and XSL. (He knew I’d love those languages.) I said yes.

Regarding my study of human languages, over the last ten months, I’ve gotten a very decent start in Esperanto, Catalan, and Spanish. I wasn’t able to take my dream vacation to Spain this year, but I’m continuing to study those languages. I decided to try to “finish” them (i.e. attain conversational competence) over the rest of this year and next year in the order of increasing difficulty: Esperanto first, then Catalan, then Spanish. I expect to be able to translate the “spirituality” section of the site into Esperanto not too long from now. (Also, with the load of computer languages I’ve got to study, Esperanto is the only human language I can handle.)

When I spend more time staring at screens and books, racking my brain to try to force new association, it becomes even more important to take frequent breaks, and re-root myself into what is beyond words, beyond logic, beyond association and thought. I feel it in the presence of my teacher. And in playing with my cat, and in watching the sun shatter itself upon a million ripples on the Elizabeth River.

That’s always what’s really important. Even more important now. I haven’t forgotten.

Recent 8

Jon7 Comments

A few weeks back, Darrell tagged me for the “Random 8” meme. At the time, I was focused on writing about other things, and even now, still not quite in a “random” mood, so how about a “recent eight,” instead?

Here’s eight facts, semi-random, but all recent:

  1. For the last two or three weeks, I’ve built most of my breakfasts around a cottage cheese dish. The core ingredients are: low-fat cottage cheese, honey, and ginger. From there it can go in a couple of directions–sweet (mix in applesauce, or mash in a strawberry or a kiwi) or savory (salsa or chipotle peppers). BTW, cottage cheese is something new for me; I used to hate cottage cheese. It just looked like someone threw up after drinking milk.
  2. I discovered another great cable sci-fi series on DVD., this one on ABC Family: It’s called Kyle XY. The first few episodes had a bit of the feeling of the 80’s Starman, but it was much better to begin with, and it quickly progressed beyond its beginnings. And the emphasis isn’t on science-fiction, but on drama. Good show.
  3. Subway’s personal pizzas are superb. I usually order them like a veggie delight sub loaded with vegetables, but on pizza.
  4. Yes, I am losing weight while eating cottage cheese breakfasts and occasional Subway pizzas!
  5. It’s been almost a week since I’ve had a Diet Pepsi. For twenty years, I’ve been seriously addicted to them. It started when I was in grad school at Kent State; I worked the late shift at our extended-hours Taco Bell for a while, and started drinking Diets heavily to stay energized during my shift. (Heavily means up to three 32-oz. cups.) Even up to last Monday, I would usually have 60 – 90 ounces of Diet Pepsi. I tried many times to quit, but never succeeded till now. How I approached it in the past was as trying to quit caffeine, but this time, it was quitting artificial sweeteners. I am drinking a lot less caffeine now, but that’s a side benefit.
  6. Since Tuesday, I’ve been doing this regimen before every meal:

    I usually pour the vinegar and the oil into the yerba mate after it’s brewed. (The vinegar gives the tea a “tang” but otherwise goes pretty smoothly, and the coconut oil is very smooth and light-tasting. I also sometimes put in ginger, rose hips, or orange extract and I sweeten it with honey, stevia, or agave nectar.

  7. The main effects I’ve noticed is that appetite is decreasing slightly, but my energy is increasing sharply.
  8. This theme is temporary! I recently upgraded WordPress and tried to upgrade the “Subtle” theme (the one you’ve seen on this site for the last several months), but the sidebars of the latest “Subtle” don’t work with the widgets of the latest WordPress. Till I make my own, I might be switching styles pretty often.