March 20, 2004 - a good day to live in Northern California

A few years ago I developed a real antipathy towards the South Bay Area.

No women, nothing to do, no one worth talking to…

I put this track on the mental iPod on repeat.

In time, I started to believe my own coaching, my own fallacious world view. It poisoned my heart, tainted my tongue, covered my eyes with scales, and closed my ears.

As the KJV says:

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: (Proverbs 23:7)

Not only this, but being a very comfortable introvert, I have a lot of time alone with my inner dialogue. What if the voice you heard alone justified all your expectations of scarcity and dissatisfaction?

See, introverts love their inner monologue. Many introverts probably feel some level of shame at admitting this, but let’s all of us say it loud and proud.

My inner dialogue is far better than most conversations with other people.

So, my fellow introverted readers, that means that we are our most powerful critics and our own most powerful promoters. When we let the toxins in we can strengthen them and concentrate the tubers into cyanide.

Realizing the strength of my own exponential engine I pumped the mental Zyklon B through my system for years. I stored it in the bellows in my chest, I let my skin turn blue like oil-streaks from the cyanin.

It culminated in my moving to San Francisco.

I love San Francisco. It is one of the most wonderful places in the world. After the months living there I now know what’s up there.

But it wasn’t the panacea I had thought it would be. Sure I had the fog, the bay air, the hills, and all sorts of mental stimulation, but the essential feeling that -

somehow things aren’t right, somehow I’m not happy persisted.

More money won’t make you happy, or more sex, or sex with prettier people, or a bigger house won’t make you happy, the poison wasn’t in the water of Sunnyvale, the cure wasn’t in the air of San Francisco, the poison was inside me.

Fast-forward through two months in Sydney that afforded me a lot of time to think and you are left asking the question: What are the cures? Two incidents lately have allowed me to find the cure.

Before I tell you the two points, let me preface this situation with a quick summation of my current situation. I find my self in Mountain View, going to yoga, watching shows about String Theory with years of New Age reading, philosophy, theosophy, Eastern Religion, Christianity, and computer programming pumping in my subconscious. Years of education, books, and discussions were all coming together to create an incubation chamber that would allow my metaphysical consideration to move where it needed to go next. Al-hamdu lillah, as some say.

Factor One:

There’s this speaker, Wayne Dyer. He’s one of these positive thinking kind of guys. He said a few things on this show I watched that have been reverberating about my head on top of the aforementioned substratum.

Don’t focus on the way to happiness, happiness is the way
Life is a function of intention

Dyer’s guidance is half of what I needed to get moving. The other half came at yoga.

Focus Two:

I was practicing a few asanas at yoga a few weeks back and my teacher kept making me open up my chest, open my ribcage and combat my chronic hunched-shoulder-ness.

She said that she had been hunched over that day. She said that it’s a posture of defense, using your arms to guard yourself from someone hurting your body, physically or psychically. She said the remedy was not more hunching, but more assertion.

The remedy for my antipathy is not more antipathy, it’s being “out there”. Dyer said it differently as: “You can’t resolve a problem by condemning it.”

Complaining about my life is devoid of this or that will ensure that my life is devoid of those things.

When I coupled Dyer’s thought with my yoga teacher’s guidance, it hit me. The source of the problem and the cure to the problem is the same: me.

So if I’m going to fix the problem I have to fix me. I know where to start too. I need to start where the Buddha said we start - teaching the ego to be silent. I have to start where Christ said we should start: loving our neighbor, I have to submit to the divine will - the yoke of Yoga and the submission of the word islam. That’s the finish line - that’s the challenge that the Divine has set for us in the course of our lives.

So, in the short term I’m going to keep working on my back and chest and standing up. I’m going to see ’eating healthy at home’ through and I’m going to go to the gym regularly.

I’m also going to be thankful that I live here in beautiful northern California where today I was able to drive up to Palo Alto down El Camino Real with my windows down and sunroof open. I’m glad the weather even conspired to help me in this realization.

I’m going to be thankful that I caught a sale at Macy’s and bought some nice new shirts. I’m going to change the way I see things, and see things differently.

My dear readers, if your world seems bleak, or you’re affected by a malaise or disconnect, make sure that you’re not coaching yourself to expect shortage. The world is one of abundance and it will give you as much shortage as you expect.

Expect the world for yourself and it will deliver.

(I’ll let you know how this goes…)

In the past stood the Tower and in the present in The Devil inverted, the future is The World.

namaste

personal