Month: July 2008

  • Synchronicity II- Reality Unleashed

    I think the hardest part for us to grasp in the whole quantum thing is that our car batteries still die even when we don't observe that we've left the dome light on all night.

    The second hardest part for us to grasp is the reality in our heads not necessarily being the reality outside of them, although most of us can usually come pretty close to describing the same basic thing.  However, this stops working when something like a person crazed with jealousy is determined that a spouse or partner is cheating when they are not.  Sometimes what's in one person's head just isn't in anyone else's.  Like drugs or something.

    Little kids have to learn to synchronize their 'realities'.  We learn as toddlers and early grade schoolers what personal space is, that we don't make the rules, that becoming a group doesn't take away our pride in our individual achievements.  We learn that there is shame and guilt and hopes and dreams.

    Then when we hit middle age we review everything we've learned and have to untangle it all before we move on, because if we don't, we get caught up in a selfish 'stupidity' phase that crashes other realities around us.  Some of us become 5 again.

    I have figured out that it all boils down to selfish vs. selfless.  Learning to say please and thank you.  Validating other people's feelings and experiences while we learn to gracefully apologize for the pain we put others through at various times in our lives.  Through everything else we do all day long for years and years, this seems to underlie everything else.

    Simple, right?  You'd be surprised how many people don't get this until they wind up in AA.  People who never drink sometimes never learn this at all, despite very elaborate belief systems spelling it all out.  I've never been to AA myself.  I just seem to keep having to learn everything the hard way (yes, even addiction), and being aspie, I tend to think a little too much about it.

    Before you blow me off, I've done it all, too.  20 years of insomnia while kids grew up.  Evil bosses and anything and everything going wrong all at once.  Realizing that my idea of being nice was ignoramous shallowness.  Actually believing Crestor was the answer.

    What's it all for?  Why are we here?  Personally, I think it's so we can learn to appreciate.  And to learn to be strong in the dark and stand steady when it seems everything else around us is 'falling apart'.

    Why am I saying this?  Why is it important?  And what the heck does this have to do with synchronicity and physics and selves?

    Some of us scifi junkies are already used to the idea of alt selves in all conceivable alt worlds, which nulls the concept of responsibility for our actions.  If I am simply living in one aspect of all possibilities, does it matter what I do?  Whatever I do in this world, it will simply be different from all the other possibilities.  It will have no other significance or meaning in the 'big scheme of things'.  Because there is no big scheme, just some runaway Alice in Wonderland funhouse full of mirrors.

    Terry Pratchett introduced a character, a witch who was able to use mirrors to change reality.  But when a sister witch asked her near the end of the book which one was really her, she ran searching through all the mirrors, unable to ascertain who 'she' was.  The sister shrugged and walked off, knowing that THIS is 'me'.  No matter how many worlds might be 'out there' or what we might be able to concoct in our heads about ourselves, who we really are is standing right here.  It's not our clothes or makeup or what we own, it's not who we pretend to be with attitudes and accomplishments.  Stripped down to our naked souls, who we are is either cruel or kind, craving or content, stubbornly closed off or open to learning.  It is NOT happy or sad.  For some reason we've got this notion in our heads that our quality of lives on this earth depends on some kind of happiness level.  That only leads to the selfish vs. selfless thing I mentioned.  If you have to be 'happy' to be fulfilled, you are missing a really big boat in the sea of spiritual life.  All it takes for *me* to be happy is half a vicodin.  For others it might be a margarita.  See the problem?  All happy can ever be is a gauge against 'unhappy'.  Those are simply tools our minds use to assess that we have internal conflict, and easily disposed of.  It is not the goal itself.

    I said in my last Synchronicity post that our bodies teach us.  Our bodies know exactly who *they* are.  They are well grounded and rebound off the walls, no matter how much actual space is between the atoms in our bodies and the walls.  It's like playing one of those Mario games where you're looking over Mario's shoulder and telling him where to go, but since you're behind him he never sees you.  His 'body' follows all the rules- it can't walk through brick walls, it falls short on impossible leaps across chasms, it can't fly or run upside down unless it has some kind of help.  Our own bodies operate like that, within preset parameters.  That's why it's impossible to float through the house when we sprain an ankle.

    What our bodies CAN do is sacrifice their lives for us.  We use our bodies the same way a rider uses a horse.  A rider can keep a horse running until it literally drops and dies.  That's what some of us do with alcohol and drugs, or crazy lifestyles that require constant activity and sacrifice, or even crazier lifestyles of uber neglect.  Our bodies will do everything in their power to serve us until they literally just can't any more.  Do we care?  We get mad at our bodies.  They hurt and keep us from doing everything we want to do.  They aren't pretty enough for us, so we punish them with starvation.  Or we take advantage of our bodies, using them for pleasure to the point of emotional gluttony while we use food, sex, and drugs to get 'high'.  When this gets out of hand, other people actually die for our pleasure.  Sex abuse is bad enough, but having to cover it up in monstrous ways completely makes my point.

    In the end, we learn that when we abuse our bodies, we abuse ourselves, our souls.  When we 'let go', as in Eastern religions, Christianity, and The Force, we synchronize our spiritual selves with our physical selves.  Letting go is scary.  We misinterpret it as 'death'.  Death of addiction, death of being in a rut, death of a way of thinking and behaving.  Sometimes actual death.

    'Mental health' is a radical new concept in human history.  What is mental health?  All things considered, mental health is being able to successfully integrate our physical world with our emotional and spiritual worlds.  Mental health is being able to objectively assess who we are, where we are, and apply that assessment to how we are.  When we schism or skew from this balance, we become 'unhealthy'.  We get caught in obsession, trauma, or emotion, and aren't able to successfully 'move on' with reality.  Up until the last couple of hundred years, the only people remotely interested in mental health were mystics, priests, and I'm not going to list all the 'oddballs' that have shown up throughout history.  My favorites are the old testament prophets, with the balls to go up against entire oppressive social systems that used and abused religion to establish controlled institutionalized cultures.  Interestingly, this kind of rebellion is at the root of nearly all organized religions on the planet.  But once they organize, they again become institutionalized oppression.

    So where are we on the mental health scale nowadays?  It seems like the more access we have to information and knowledge, the more frightened people become and turn to alternate 'answers'.

    This is an excerpt from a private post I made on another blog last year.  I can't link to the post because it contains other things that are more personal, but I will share this part.  Think of this as a continuation of thought from my last Synchronicity post and the way we 'run into' each other out of the blue and have unusual experiences.

    Escape to Witch Mountain and Return to Witch Mountain are on the Hallmark channel this morning.  Those were about my all-time fave movies growing up.  I always felt so alienated from my own parents, I wished all the time I really did come from someplace else.

    Ran into a woman in Walmart Friday, very unusual experience.  She asked about my earrings, which looked Indian, and said she had lived in New Mexico.  I said I grew up in New Mexico, and from there we talked over an hour.  Not the usual talk.  It was almost like we were comparing notes, checking to see that we're on the right track or something.  She is a nurse and teacher and married to a physicist that works in the military, so they move around, and she is very into Native American spiritualism, raised Catholic, into energy healing through acupuncture, etc. Very emotional, the opposite of me.  Sounds like she'd done some really cool stuff, including a sweat lodge ceremony, but kept mentioning how everything affected her so deeply, so I told her she was born with the burden of feeling very deeply in this life, and many people don't understand that truly is a burden.  Saying that had so much meaning and validation for this woman that she hugged me and thanked me for understanding, because she always wondered what was 'wrong' with her for things to affect her so deeply, and she kept running into others who confessed that her deep feelings and tears helped them make monumental life changing decisions themselves.  She knew it meant something, but what?

    I have been tuned into synchronicity for most of my life, and not because I ever knew what the heck it meant.  I seem to have an edge or something.  I see things others don't, and I've never known why.  When people like this (who are very open to spiritual awareness) run into me, they automatically 'recognize' me and cannonball right into a whirlwind of crash counseling.  It seems that since I am so able to speak openly without judgment or emotion, that frees them to be so completely honest about themselves that they spill their lives to me without reservation.  Over time I've learned to expect this, and even though I'm aspie and naturally cringe from human contact, I have a strong feeling I really am 'somebody' that these people recognize somehow, and that I am meant to help them assess where they are and how they're doing on whatever they are learning in this life.  That seems to be what I have a knack for.  I ask questions in all the right places, point out things that are obvious to me but not them, and I'm getting really good at helping them zoom out and see a bigger picture in the shortest possible amount of time, since we never see each other again.  We instantly know somehow that we're not 'friends' in this life, but we 'know' each other, and dang I can't tell you how many times this has literally happened to me.  I no longer question it.  It just happens.

    We all have our spiritual challenges, and hers is handling the deep feelings of herself and others around her.  I myself am cushioned from that through the Asperger's, and even though I have deep feelings, I easily divorce myself from being emotionally caught up.  I don't know that either way is better than the other, but we certainly live on opposite ends of that spectrum.  But it was very cool feeling so synchronized within seconds with a total stranger, talking about things we'd learned in this life as if we were meant to meet up and compare notes.  I told her I grew up basically Mennonite but had progressed into a sociology/anthropology degree and self taught physics, and that I'm feeling like there is way more to God than the simplistic religions we follow, and that it's counter intuitive to keep God at a shallower level than even we live ourselves.  God is far too commercialized and stereotyped to be God any more, and mass religion has become a social science taught to young pastors in college.  I think there is a new movement trying to get away from that, seen as evil by mainstream Christianity, to the point where American Christians have become almost as closed minded and dangerous as zealot Muslims.  (Bombing of abortion clinics, for instance.)  I agreed with this woman that the only thing that can save our nation from complete downfall is getting back to the simple spiritual roots and connection to God that the Native American Indians felt all along.

    Total stranger.  She put great stock by the coincidence.  I don't think anything is truly coincidental.

    I've noticed that we seem to measure our progress with symbolism.  Some people are into crystals, this woman was into turquoise and told me of a special collection she has that carries deep significance.  I was very attracted to turquoise growing up (I'm really into blue) and kept a secret stone with me for years.  But I realized before I reached adulthood that hanging onto pieces of earth or sky is just symbolism.  We can let go of the real objects, because they only represent the deeper meanings within.  They trigger feelings and thoughts, sometimes memories, but they aren't to be hung onto until death.  We are here to learn, and then we let go.  Of everything.  Even a diamond in a ring is just a chip of rock and a strip of metal.  It may be a representation, and it may have great meaning, but in the end, if that means more than the actual love we give to someone (look at all the divorces...), then it's just junk.  I think it's sad that people can put more meaning into rocks than they do the people in front of them.  I understand the attraction to turquoise and crystals (or pink feldspar  heehee) because I really like geology and the history of rock formation, but whatever energy flows through them and us is easily channeled just by letting go of negativity and relaxing, whether we are conscious of it or not.  I don't think it's necessary to be conscious of it.  We should be more aware of how we hurt and neglect each other than how energy flows through a rock.  This is where the Buddha failed to open the seal in Revelations.  (Many tried.)  It had to be someone who was willing to let go of everything ~for love~.  Not just let go of everything, period.  I don't think it matters whether this is mythology or 'real'.  The truth behind it is the point.

    I feel very tied to this earth.  I love the moon cycles, I love the weather cycles, the growing cycles, the ancient history of rocks.  My body is of this earth.  But my spirit isn't.  I love being here and feeling it.  But if I teach my spirit to hang onto things of this earth as powerful symbols, like a rock, then my spirit is missing the lessons we learn from letting go.  Part of our fear is letting go and moving on.  We hang on to things in our past or our present with fear and the dread of losing something we let go of instead of moving forward with confidence.  If God has truly created all this, nothing will ever be lost.  Us hanging onto something won't preserve it.  It will be preserved always.  Everything we do or experience will always be a part of us, whether we are physically hanging onto it or not.

    I wasn't able to tell this woman that.  I didn't think she was ready to hear it.  I think she still needs her 'teddy bear', and I don't say that condescendingly.  I know it's hard walking without a comfort of some kind.  She has a lot of fear and depends on not only a strong support network but material things and the guise of spiritual healing.  As we go forward it eventually all falls off, until we are naked before God.

    A little deep today...

    But that's what I believe.  When all is said and done, it all boils down to us and God.  I know he loves us, but he's training us to become strong.  Part of becoming strong is being stripped of comfort and learning to walk alone, still being able to truly love without the reward or promise of having that love back.  I know we're never truly alone, but I mean without any social support.  I have been challenged through this whole life being stripped of comfort and walking alone, and I think the joy I've learned is deeper for it, and things I've learned about love and forgiveness and self sacrifice make more sense than to someone who hasn't suffered this kind of challenge.  I still have a ways to go, but at least I'm not moving backward.  I think it's important that we learn we are the ones who create the love we search for.  We become what others need, whether we ever get it for ourselves or not.  It's possible to love completely without being loved back.

    It's enough that most people go through fear and loss, crippling illness and disfigurement, abuse, horrible disillusionment.  Some have more to carry, some have less.  But I see that we all carry pain and sorrow in some way, and that we all have the opportunity to become strong and learn joy that we'd never have known if our eyes weren't opened in this fashion.

    We are to learn to be content with who we are and what we have.  We are to wait patiently for God.  We are to enjoy the gifts the earth gives us to survive, like food and water.  And we are to learn to forgive others for not being like us or what we think they should be.  Beyond that, it's all distraction.

    I don't know why that woman zeroed in on me, but I gave her a big hug and enjoyed listening to her and asking her questions.  I'll probably never see her again.  I hope it helped her.  I'm not sure what she needed from me, but I think she felt validated and relieved to talk.

    Some of you might have caught that I'm kind of into a holistic religion thing.  I don't think eastern and western religions are that different from each other, just like me and this woman aren't that different, even though we've lived very different lives and have very different ways of looking at things.  Our conclusions are the same.  It's better to live positively than negatively.  It's better to care about others than not.  'God', in whatever form you hold him, is a constant that has never left the human consciousness.  Forgiveness is better than holding grudges.  Kindness is better than being harsh.  In the common human experience, we are all heading the same direction.  I don't think it matters if you believe in multiple lives or cold hard science.  What matters is that we care about the people in front of us in spite of how we are different or what we believe.  When we stop caring, we inflict pain or neglect, and that in ANY religion is bad.

    I live in the bible belt.  I have seen more religious persecution and abuse by common Christians than anyone else they say inflicts them.  This woman I spoke with was so astounded that she could speak freely in a Walmart, of all places, that you'd think we lived in a society where freedom of speech and the right to practice religion didn't exist.  That's how you live around Christians in my area.  I grew up Christian, I'm still Christian, but I can't sit in a denominational church and pretend that's right.  The brainwashing that goes on is incredible.  I'm surprised the local city Assembly doesn't hand out koolaid during their huge July 4th extravaganzas that draw upwards of 30-40,000 people.  The same enthusiastic people who put on those shows will turn their backs and walk away when a student is nearly beaten to death by a bible group on a public college campus for wearing a Batman t-shirt.

    I wasn't kidding about that.  I live in a religious war zone.   My own neighborhood drove a black family out just a few years ago, and it's not just because this is a rich neighborhood.  The KKK is alive and well, in spite of what people think.  Some people in these parts are so superstitious that they think science is ruining us.  They refuse to get shots for their kids.  I could go on and on.  The unspoken fear and violence is ridiculous, in spite of living in such a modern age on the verge of comprehending what world peace could be all about.

    Ok, back to here and now.

    I know this world looks like a pretty crappy place sometimes.  There are people on this earth who have watched their children go through agonizing illness and death.  There are people who lost parents as children themselves and felt lost and angry.  There are people who are laying in rows of beds having chemotherapy treatments.  There are people starving to death during famines right now.  There are people in prisons being beaten nearly to death knowing that they'll never see their families again.  There are people committing suicide all over this planet because they feel they have no hope, no future, no one who cares.  Why am I saying this?  I'm not a softie who sheds a tear for the sufferings of mankind.  Neither am I a literalist saying this is all a waste.

    And it's not just that.  Some of us have ourselves been through physical and emotional abuse that would curl some peoples' hair.  Some of us have been through illness and sadness that would take down the strongest titan.  Some of us know what it feels like to suffer without end, to anguish without comfort, and to regret without forgiveness.  Life on this planet is truly horrific if you look at it from certain angles.  But along with the truly horrific comes the 'waking up'.

    When something feels good, we don't change.  We don't think about anything else.  It's like being a turtle sunning on a log over a pond.  As long as a good feeling is there, we don't move.  We could stay like that forever, basking in feeling good.  It wouldn't matter if something across the pond was flailing around for some reason, as long as it wasn't interrupting what feels good to us, no problem.

    What wakes us up?  Suddenly the sun is too hot and we've got to flip off the log back into the water.  Or our stomachs growl to the point where basking no longer feels that good.  What wakes us up is discontent.  What wakes us up even more is when whatever caused the flailing across the pond comes to our side and either starts us flailing or eats whatever we were going to eat.  Discontent becomes emotional.  Emotion helps us deal with the disruption.  We either fear and run, or grow enraged and attack.  We want to bring the balance and good feeling back.  Sometimes we have to fight for it.  This world seems to be specifically geared to create discontent and misery.  Those are what drive us to move, to think, to act.

    That was about as simplistic as it gets, wasn't it?  But that's where it all starts.  We are a world of extremely discontented people, jealous of a few of the people who 'have it all' or who get to be powerful.  We feel angry, fearful, and a whole bunch of other feelings about not being able to control a lot of things in our lives.  We hang onto symbols and beliefs to 'get us through' when times seem hard.  This is where 'letting go' begins.  This is the kind of stuff Buddha and Yoda and Jesus and Mr. Spock and a bunch of others were going on about.

    We are the ones who hold ourselves back.  It's not the government, it's not our neighbors, it's not our parents, it's not our bosses.  We are the ones who act and react.  Some of us got more out of Vulcans and Jedi growing up than we did going to church, and as far as I'm concerned, if we have to create mythology to survive modern thinking, so be it.  If it helps us follow the same path we were meant to be on anyway, so be it.  Because all of this is already inside of us.  This is what we feel as synchronicity.  This is us waking up and noticing who we are in this 'reality' we are in.

    We're almost done.   

    I wrote a post a few months ago called Stars on a blue spectrum where I wind up saying what I remember and want to get back to is ~joy~.  Anyone following this blog knows I'm anti-happy.  I think it's a very misleading concept.  But what I am is pro-joy.  I think joy is a much more intense happiness, a delightful happiness, a bliss not contingent on a thing or event.  Joy comes from within.  I believe joy is where we come from and go back to.  I also believe that we are meant to be more than just content to soak up a little sun.  Anyone who is born and dies on this planet is ~special~.  This is the *hard* class.  This is the class where we really get thrown into the grit and have a chance to come out with much more than those little gold stars we used to get in the 3rd grade on those timed addition tests.  This world is an icon of challenge, and everything in it is geared to channel us to think and be and do.  All our greatest stories, myths, legends, and movies are about personal challenge, trials and tribulations, and either growth or tragedy.  Our physical bodies are perfect places for spiritual minds to develop.

  • my life in 63 questions

     

    My current life in 63 questions.

    1. Whats the highlight of your day?
    Whoa, wait a second, there's a ~highlight~???  How long have I been missing this one?

    2. Who's car were you in last?
    I dream occasionally of being in fatal car accidents.  They are extremely detailed, and I'm always surprised to find myself alive when I wake up.  I feel no emotion during these dreams, but I do experience every sight, sound, smell, and physical feeling.  I know what I look like (not like I do in this body), who my family is (not the family I have now), and what my life is about (far unlike this life I'm living).  However, when I wake up I never remember a NAME.  I have no idea who I am each time I experience a new death.  I have been doing this for a number of years, and each accident is unique and very different from the one before, different place, different weather, different family.  I do not feel that the 'me' I experience in these dreams has anything to do with ME.  These are not former lives or alt selves or anything like that.  The only connection I seem to have is simultaneously experiencing a fatal car accident with them.  So honestly, I couldn't tell you whose white car with black trim crossed the center line, hit the ditch, went into a midair twist before it slammed onto its hood, and took out a fence and several fence posts in a field.  I won't go into the details on what it felt like to die like that.  I do remember thinking "This is going to kill me" as the car went airborne.  Scott thinks it's because I've been in an accident, but that doesn't explain why I'm different people every single time, and every accident I dream about is so different from my own experience, including that all the people in my dreams actually die in various ways and I get to feel it happen.

    3. When is the next time you are going to kiss someone?
    October 7th, 2008, 3:02 p.m.  Bet you're wondering who it's going to be, eh?  heh heh

    4. What color shirt are you wearing?


    5. How long is your hair?
    It's getting annoying.  If it's gonna stick up, it should stick up right.  Lethargic bed head just isn't cool.  I don't wanna look like a 60's British pop star.

    6. Last movie you watched

    Do you know how long it's been since I'd seen Episode II: Attack of the Clones?  I finally watched it again.

    7. Last thing you ate?
    I need another shot of hot chocolate.  Hang on.

    8. Last thing you drank?
    Wow, I never came back, did I?  But you don't know that.  So far I've spent 4 days on this.  I'm averaging two questions a day.

    9. Where did you sleep last night?
    That's what *I* want to know.

    10. Are you happy right now?
    This is not my state of mind, no.

     
    The Aliens - 'The Happy Song'
     
     
     


    11. What did you say last?
    "This is not my state of mind, no."

    12. Where is your phone?
    It's happy right now.  No one is bothering it.

    13. What was the last museum you went to?
    It was a really happy one because it was closed.

    14. What color are your eyes?
    Happy.

    16. When was the last time you had your heart broken?
    Happily, I'm not going to talk about this.

    17. Who/what do you hate/dislike currently?
    Happiness.

    18. What are you listening to?
    Happily, nothing.

    19. If you could have one thing right now what would it be?
    A pox on this word 'happy', and all who follow it into silly little beliefs.

    20. Whats your favorite smell?
    Ok, ok, I'll stop with the happy thing.  I could care less if you're happy.  Go ahead and be happy, that's fine.  I'm not upset about it.  But if the survey maker brings it up again...

    21. Who makes you happiest right now?
    *Jack Bauer is about to kill the survey maker*
     
    24:Jack Bauer Damn it!
     
     
     
     
     
    I can just see Jack Bauer filling out an internet survey like this...  About halfway through he stands up, whips out his gun, and blows his monitor right off the desk.

    22. What were you doing at midnight last night?
    I will now go into intricate detail about what happens throughout the limbic system as the body sleeps...  Ok, I won't, but the survey maker nearly forced me to bore you all to tears.

    23. Are you left-handed?
    Let's find out.  *throwing darts at survey maker left handed*  Rats, guess not.

    24. What's for dinner tonight?
    63 - 24 = omg, I've still got 39 more questions to go.  Wait, there's hope...  I can see that 28 is missing.  Maybe others are missing, too.  Oh, thank God.

    25. What is the last alcoholic beverage you had?
    Watkins Vanilla Extract  Yes, I know you said "beverage", but I accidentally tipped a little too much in my hot chocolate this morning.  Does a teaspoon of 30% alcohol count?  BTW, really good vanilla is over 80 bucks a gallon now if you buy it by the ounce.  Just a little context in a world of 'soaring' gas prices.  If you are shrugging this off, you have no idea how many things you eat and drink that have vanilla flavoring in them.

    26. When is your birthday?
    Pollen.com says my sinus headache might be coming from chenopods.

    27. Who was the last person to send you a text message?
    I promised my sister I wouldn't put that crazy silly face she made on the internet.  My siblings fear me.

    29. Where was the last place you went shopping?
    A really awesomely cool local Amish gourmet 'cheese' shop featuring over 80 different kinds of cheese and you can only imagine the rest.  I picked up some
    Hawgwash bbq sauce and buffalo summer sausage to add to the private weekend grill fest we'll have for Scott's birthday.

    30. How do you feel about your hair right now?
    Why did this not come directly under # 5?  Is the survey maker unhappy with a salon accident, perhaps?  Or maybe an error in taste?  I hope I'm not talking to someone with a mullet...    No offense if you are reading this and wear your hair in a mullet.   

    32. AIM or MSN?
    I've blocked the whole world.  It doesn't matter.  I can't wait until advertising logos come out on onesies.  Can you just see an infant wearing Alltel?  Yahoo?  And I bet people would buy them, too.

    33. Where does most of your family live?
    How far are we extending the 'family'?  I come from pretty scattered stock.

    34. Are you an only child or do you have siblings?
    I may never finish this survey.  This has got to be the most boring survey I've ever filled out in my life.  Is it me?  Am *I* the boring one?  It must be me.  No wonder this is taking a month to finish.  I must be in some kind of slump.

    35. Would you consider yourself to be spoiled?
    By the Mennonite super hard working standards I grew up with, Scott spoils me rotten.  By mainstream American standards, I am a frugal hermit.  I see most of what people spend money on as excess waste.  But I could ask for the moon and Scott would get it for me.

    36. What was the first thing you thought when you woke up?
    What inept bubblehead schedules me for physical therapy 4 hours before an MRI with sedation where I can't eat for 8 hours before the procedure???  Sorry, I just got a phone call, that wasn't the first thing I thought when I woke up.  Actually, the first thing I thought was I'm watching too much tv.  I dreamt Jack Bauer and Kathy Griffin got married, and their assistants had to buy each other Christmas presents.  Yeah, way off the wall.  BTW, my psychologist looks eerily like Tom on Team Griffin.  Just thought I'd share that.  Anyway, I was able to reschedule, thank goodness.  I can see me totally sugar crashing before sedation, yeah.

    37. Do you like to drink beer?
    When someone spends $34 a pound on gourmet old fashioned candy for you, you'd better eat it before it gets hard as a rock.  I'm really bad about forgetting I have candy around.  I just ran into it as my Jack Sparrow calendar was falling apart and I had to fix it.  You know, out of all the calendars I've had over the years, I've never had one just fall apart like leaves off a tree before like this.  Is this because it's a pirate calendar?  Pirates are known for 'splitting'.  Ok, that was bad, where were we?  Beer.  Gosh, I haven't had a beer in nearly two decades.  Before I went into liver toxicity I would drink a skunked beer that had rolled around under the seat in a hot car for a month.  But I do have to confess, I would have much preferred a dark lager.

    40. What is/was your favorite subject in school?
    You assume I'm actually teaching.  Haha, I'm so funny.  I did have the chance to go teach at a local college, but frankly, repeating the same material ad nauseam semester after semester bores me out of my skull.  All my classes would turn into either standup or me making the students write social-psyche analyses on Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.

    41. What type of boy/girl do you usually fall for?
    I kinda like the whole male gender thing.  Is that a type?

    42. Do you have any hidden talents?
    Trick question.  Like, how low IS my IQ?  Not that low.  Ok, for those of you who didn't get this (at the risk of offending some of you who don't get it but still understand why I'm explaining), I'll spell it out.  If I say what they are, they are no longer hidden, thus the survey maker got me to 'talk'.  I bet the rest of you woulda fallen for it.

    43. Have you ever been in a wedding?
    This kinda reminds me of the survey where the question was "Have you ever eaten a bug?"  Is anyone EVER gonna ask me if I've ever seen a UFO?  For crying out loud, let's get some imagination going.

    44. Are you going to have any children within 6 years.
    Ok, the '6' saved this one.  I don't know why 6, but I'll let this one slide.  And let's hope I don't.  I've already told my kids not to have any yet so I can catch a breather.  It's weird knowing how fertile I still am.  I know guys would probably be proud of that, but the longer I go, the more I worry about birth control failure and how ironic it would be.  And my lack of fear.  I'm sure I'd name this one Spock, regardless of the sex, just for kicks.  The kid would hate me.

    45. Did you take a nap today?
    I'm up at 2 a.m., today has just begun.  But here is the plan- hang out until 5, whereafter I can't eat solid foods or milk for 8 hours, then go back to bed to make the time pass faster.  Now I will totally leave you hanging about what the heck is going on.

    46. Ever met someone famous?
    This would have been a scary question a few decades ago.  You hear all kinds of stories about someone from the mob showing up at a spa in Hot Springs or whatever.  I'm really lucky I live in a tourist area that doesn't take famous people that seriously because they're so mixed in with the general population that it's just no big deal.  It's like with Yakov Smirnoff- what happens at Chuck E. Cheese stays at Chuck E. Cheese, you know?  That was a few years ago.  He's still running around loose with his kids.  We don't have paparazzi after the guy.  And apparently the Osmond Brothers are taking over with their hearing center and something about all the murals in the kids' hallways at the hospital, so you just never know.  Being aspie in retail and hospitality lends to a sort of down to earth feel.  I don't look at faces more than I have to (grin and greet within 8 feet, as they say), I'm more into price checks than names, and the face pattern recognition thing sometimes takes awhile to kick in.  Besides, a kid up the street from me has been in a movie.  So?  We don't care.  Well, we care, but we have lives, knowhutImean?

    47. Do you want to be famous one day?
    Oh, I'm sure I've mentioned this in other surveys that have probably disappeared over time, but I'm the chick who back in the 80s caught her hair on fire in a Pizza Hut and the chain yanked all the candles off the tables overnight, yada yada.  Yes, I was urban legend.  I'm here to say that one was true.  My profuse apologies to everyone who missed the cool ambiance of those round red candle holders with those white net thingies around them while they were on nervous romantic dates wondering where all the candles went.

    48. Are you multitasking right now?
    Ok, I'll tell you.  I can't eat all day because I have an MRI with sedation today.  They don't like claustrophobic people laying in those tubes screaming while they keep saying "HOLD STILL, PLEASE".

    49. Could you handle being in the military?
    I would probably get a little too excited and shoot one of my comrades in the leg or something.  Not that I'm a bad shot, but we all know how knives go flying out of my hands when I'm telling a story.

     
    Trigger Happy - Farscape
     
     
     
     

    50. What is your average cell phone bill?
    This kind of question cracks me up.  You want my average number of calls?  My average minutes used?  My average directory assistance calls that cost $1 apiece and get Scott worked up?  I really don't care enough to go check all this stuff.

    51. Do you believe in karma?
    Karma has grabbed me by the ankles and slung me through several buildings.  And yet I still giggle.

    52. Ever been to Las Vegas?
    You haven't played a slot machine until you've had a '1 in 5 chance' heart procedure.  I do like quarters though.  If I ever get rich, I'll put a slot machine in my house.  I'll probably wind up with my arm in a sling.  Wait, I'll be able to pay people to pull the slot arm for me.

    53. What are you doing today?
    Ok, ok, I'll tell you, just quit bugging me.  It's a brain scan.  We're focusing on the 7th cranial nerve on the left side of the back of my head, no contrast.  (I'm allergic to contrast, which I hear is less than 1% of the population.  I'm special.)  I guess we're also ruling out MS plaques and several other neuro issues again.  I rolled a car and flipped out spectacularly when I was 19, and yes, I know I'm lucky to be alive, nearly ripped my head off going out a window, so the headaches are kinda off the wall sometimes.  From what I understand, the highest suicides rates in the world related to medical issues have to do with cranial and trigeminal nerve damage, so I can't even begin to describe to you the pain I've lived with for nearly 30 years now.  And no, I wasn't drinking and driving.  I was on my way to church, passing a car that was doing 40, and another car popped up out of an unmarked dip.  I saved all our lives going off the road.  It's weird how time really slows down during stuff like that.  I looked over at the car beside me and saw the terror on the guy's face, and yanked my car right off and said "God, you take it."  There was a kid that witnessed the whole thing and came racing out of his house yelling that it was better than Dukes of Hazard.  Always happy to entertain.  I was conscious through the whole thing.  The car hit a ditch, flew up perfectly between two trees while it flipped in mid air, landed on the windshield (I remember seeing it shatter), and from there gyrated and flipped wildly while I was thrown out a window.  I vividly remember the left side of my face being on the ground looking at the car on the roof spinning right at me and thinking it would just smear me.  How in the world did I have enough time to even think that?  I didn't realize my feet were in the air and I was still flipping myself.  Sure felt the thud, though.  Slid several feet into a wild rose bush, and the emergency crew had to untangle my hose out of the bush before they could get me onto a gurney.  (That was my favorite dress...  )  They couldn't believe I was still alive, much less conscious, and able to tell them to look for my sister, along with my ss# and all other pertinent information.  I have no idea how badly I was hurt.  I left the hospital as soon as I could stand up and walk without throwing up.  I was purple from head to toe and crawled around the house for two weeks before I could walk upright.  Yes, I was pretty stubborn back then...  (This probably explains why I like Jack Bauer so much.  The guy could eat a bomb and still keep going.)

    54. Have you ever been gambling?
    I don't have to.  My whole life is a gamble.

    55. Have you been to New York City?
    They say my tv brings me to Times Square when the ball drops, so I guess I have.

    56. Have you ever been out of the country?
    This page is cracking me up. 
    Juarez Mexico Travel Guide  "Whatever you may have heard, Juarez, Mexico is full of good people, interesting attractions, fine restaurants, a fascinating history, and very impressive shopping values."  Yeah, I've been to Juarez.  Don't wander off alone there.  Justice for the Women of Juárez and Chihuahua

    57. Ever been to Disneyland/world?
    I've been offered a totally free trip.  Didn't work out.

    58. Do you have a favorite cartoon character?
    Darkwing Duck was a genius spoof on everything superhero.  And since I grew up with ducks, I knew every bit of it was entirely plausible.
     
    Darkwing Duck Intro
     
     
     
     


    59. Last thing you cooked?
    Does microwaving hot chocolate count?  I'm going to have an egg sandwich soon.

    60. Stupidest thing you ever did with your cell phone?
    Put it in the same pocket with a chicken egg.  You've heard of the 'small farmer', right?  Well, I represent the extremely small farmer.  And yes, the egg broke while I was ducking into the pen to feed my chicken, had to get a new phone.  I know, I know, who puts an egg into a pocket...

    61. Last time you were sick?
    I don't wanna talk about it right now.

    62. How big is your house?
    I'm surrounded by earth homes, so mine sticking up into the sky looks more impressive than it probably actually is.

    63. Do you think anyone will repost this?
    I know you can't copy and paste from this blog, but you can email it to yourself and go from there.  Man, it's finally over.
     

  • Synchronicity, Suicide, and The Eyes

    parcheesi

    Synchronicity- basically, my life.  Click that for the technical discussion.
     
    It happens all the time.  I run into someone I've never met before (a bus boy who looks like Johnny Depp), start up a conversation out of the blue (would you be ok with dressing up like Jack Sparrow for a fundraising event I'm involved with), and things totally fit into place immediately (not only are the last four digits of our phone numbers identical, but he was looking around for something like this to do).  The weird coincidences are not always this dramatic or obvious, but I've noticed they are pretty constant.  I'm like a magnet.
     
    Or, I go see my mother-in-law at the hospital.  Someone asks her what her boss's number is.  The last four digits of his phone number exactly match the last four digits to the phone of the hospital room she's in.
     
    When we shuffle a deck of cards and see patterns (I used to play solitaire a lot and would get some insanely intriguing patterns), *we* see the patterns.  The cards do not.  The three of spades doesn't go, Oh, look, I'm sandwiched between the two of spades and four of spades again by ~chance~, imagine that.  So the events themselves don't see themselves as coincidence.  We are the ones who see the events as coincidence.
     
    Chance is a funny thing.  If it doesn't happen at just the right time, it's no longer chance.  If it misses you by just a few seconds, any kind of luck or synchronicity is lost.  Also, if it happens too soon and sits around and waits for you, it's no longer chance, because it was bound to happen anyway.  So for events to line up in your life in the 'nick of time' or whatever, chance becomes synchronicity.  It becomes meaningful in a personal way.
     
    One of the most memorable days of my life seemed like chance.  I was having a horrible time trying to get out the door to go pick up my grade schooler after school.  I'm usually an early person.  But for whatever reason, I couldn't seem to control time that day, it all got away from me, and I was super late going out the door.  And first on the scene of an accident that just happened down my street.  Even one minute earlier out my door, and that girl would have died, because I would have just missed that accident, and no one else would be driving by until it was too late.  For her, that was synchronicity.  For some, that is the 'work of angels'.  Whatever you wanna call it.
     
    Some people want to believe this is all accidental.  This earth.  Us.  The big bang.  The way the wind blows.  The fact that millions of people die from famines and catastrophes.  The fact that so many others live wealthy lives and never have to change a trash bin for themselves.  Just one big accident.  The only reason it has meaning is because we (accidents) give it meaning.  Somehow.  I've given that a big thought and think it's ludicrous for an accident of any kind to beget meaning.  Events beget meaning because they cause or affect more events later.  Events eventually affect living things.  If the living things themselves are accidents, then there should not be the capability of meaning being attached anywhere.  So some people believe nothing that happens is accidental.  Every smallest thing is part of the whole, and the whole is one.  The only thing that trips us up is being conscious of the conflict we feel over suffering.  For some reason, suffering is the trigger that wakes us up.
     
    We even call strokes CVAs, or cardiovascular "accidents".  An accident is an unforeseen uncontrollable event.  A lack of intention, as one online dictionary puts it.  I fell down and scraped my knees all the time when I was a kid.  I had an accident.  But the events all follow and lead to what happens, and the only 'accident' is that I was not conscious of a chain of events happening until it disrupted me and forced me to notice.
     
    Signs at work say accidents can be prevented.  Transportation science says accidents can be prevented.  But who can prevent multiple wildfires started by lightning?  Is that an accident?  If there are no humans there to observe and practice ways to prevent something, can we still call it synchronicity?
     
    There is no 'good' or 'bad' to synchronicity.  And accidents aren't always bad.  I accidentally wind up in the right place at the right time and something good happens.  Completely unintentional. 
     
    I am able to comfortably carry conflicting views without it bothering me, much like the Electric Monk in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  I don't know if this is a byproduct of my Asperger's, but it makes thinking about things a lot more fun, and I can work on ideas like they are big puzzles.  One of my ideas is that our linear experiences on this planet in this 3D medium in our bodies is like a learning program.  The physical teaches us symbolically through the emotional about the spiritual, which are ultimately conflicting viewpoints by themselves.  I don't believe the universe is a wind up clock, a pair of dice, or even a singular happenstance with no ultimate meaning once it's all over.  I don't believe the will to live and the fight for right is born of purely physical material.  I'm not into 'mother earth', I'm not a 'Jesus freak', I'm not anything.  I've looked over all of it, east to west, over tens of millenia, and I think it's basically all the same thing, just in different points of view.
     
    Basically, we are sacks of wet minerals chemically interacting with amino acids.  When the poets tell of the stars in the heavens singing, that's us.  When the rocks lift their voices to the skies, that's us.  We are the voice of this universe.  Or part of the voice.  I also count all the 'voices' on the planet, and all the 'voices' that have ever come to be able to express themselves in any way whatsoever in this universe.  Anything that experiences suffering in any way is a voice of anguish, down to cells and viruses.  I look around on this planet, and I see a plethora of beings experiencing life in every conceivable way.
     
    Some think we are the universe becoming conscious.  I don't think so.  I don't think consciousness is new.  I think it's new to us.  We are just discovering it, defining it, thinking about it.  It always was, just like kindness has always been kindness, and sorrow has always been sorrow.  I think these are universal concepts, things we discover, not invent.  Humans didn't invent kindness.  We recognized it when it happened.  We gave it a name so we could discuss it.  Same as math.
     
    When events happen that are 'good' or 'bad', we recognize them.  They disrupt us and get our attention, unless we are so deep in our heads that we aren't noticing.  And then when we experience them, we call them luck, chance, synchronicity.  We don't realize it was coming all along.  Or we call it fate, and say it was meant to be, and accept that against all wildly impossible odds, whatever happens is our destiny.  I'm not sure I quite grasp the whole 'soul mate' possibility, and sometimes it's hard to grasp destiny being terribly ironic.
     
    This is where we grind to a stop and ask-- ah, but was it engineered to happen, or is this the wind up clock you don't believe in?  Is this a consciousness caring about us, or punishing us to make a point?  Is my agonizing howl to the heavens on a dark lonely night a waste?  Does my sorrowful existence have meaning simply because I exist and I deem it so?  Or does this really MEAN something?
     
    And if my existence here is meaningful, why do I look around and see so much sorrow?
     
    That's the key.
     
    At some point or another, a great many people contemplate letting go of it all, committing suicide.  And many do it.  That also crossed my mind at a very sad and painful time in my life.  But, my mind being aware that it is like that Electric Monk, I took the time to think about a few things before I just 'believed' them.  I really don't know for sure what will happen next, as they say.  I had to break it down into probabilities and figure out the pros and cons of each one.  I broke it down into the three most basic equal points of view- "I" no longer exist after this body dies (as per atheism), I do exist after this body dies and go to some kind of reward or punishment (as per religion), or I do exist after this body dies and 'move on' either through more lives on this earth or as some kind of energy being (just because that's the way things are).  I wanted to be very careful with this just in case I did kill myself and turned out to be quite wrong and instantly regretted not being able to change my mind.  As long as I'm in this body, no matter how bad the pain or sorrow, I can still choose.  I don't know if that's possible later.
     
    So, number one, what if "I" no longer exist after this body dies?  Looks like a totally easy way out, doesn't it?  No more pain, HA!  Take *that*, universe!  But... if there is no me to experience the cessation of pain, logically my pain never stops...  "I" never feel relief from my pain.  That's a stumper, didn't see that one coming.  The only experience I have is in this body, so I ~can't~ experience not being in it.  Talk about a bucket of ice water in the ol' face.  So it's like this life I'm living IS eternity for me, because in essence, I never experience a before or after, all I know is this.  I will never, ever, EVER be able to escape my pain killing myself.  For all I know, this linear string of experiences will exist for me forever somehow.  If you like really gnawing the philosophical gristle, chew on that one for awhile.
     
    So, number two, what if I kill myself and there is reward or punishment?  Or monsters?  Lots and lots of monsters?  Maybe I just can't see them while I'm in this body.  Maybe this body is what is keeping them from being able to get me.  This is where the little kid point of view starts to kick in and really make sense.  Maybe this instinctual fear really is an instinctual fear for a reason.  If there really is reward, and I took myself off the 'game board' of life because I refused to meet my challenges, isn't there some kind of background belief in nearly every religion that suicide is 'bad'?  It's the chicken's way out.  It's the rebellious way out, the tongue sticking out at God or something.  Oh, crap, if God really exists, and he invented all this and put me on that game board for a reason, and I remove myself and therefore drastically change future events via my absence, what then?  (And this is a legitimate question-- let me jump forward and mention that because I made the decision to stay, not only have I saved a life in a car accident, but I've completely changed the life of a child born to a heavy drug and alcohol abuser (as a step parent), been available for many smaller needs, crises, and emergencies when no one else was, and was there to comfort and feed a number of others in times of distress.)  So, um, is it a sin to give up?  To throw in the towel and stomp off saying life's not fair?  Will I really be punished?  Will I miss out on some really cool stuff, even though half the time it seems kinda corny?  Maybe if I just wait a few years and see how things turn out, surely this awful time can't last forever.  Unless I stop it all now and force it to last forever...  Egads.
     
    So, number three, what if I kill myself and come back as an ant?  Ok, ok, who knows how long that joke as been around.  Gotta build up your karma so you can climb your way outa this hellhole or something.  Every time you slip up you get 'sent back'.  Like Parcheesi.  How deep do the implications in that game go, roll the dice (chance) and make decisions based on the roll (how we choose to live our lives), with the goal being to escape the rebirth cycle (mistakes send you 'back') and climb the ladder to 'home' (nirvana?).  Suicide isn't exactly a brownie point in the ol' karma.  It's more like a stain.  Life is tough for everybody, suck it up.  Or start over again until you learn the noble lessons and get it right so you can move on.  Everything we do in these lives, whether you believe in reincarnation or simply continuing to exist after these bodies die, adds onto our whole selves, a continuous collection of memories and experiences.  What is the point to this?  If this is really happening, and we really go on according to our behaviors and whether we've learned anything, then giving the universe the raspberry kinda backfires.
     
    In conclusion, no matter what the viewpoint is, self death doesn't appear to be a 'way out' of responsibility for our actions, or a logical response to escaping our suffering.  Apparently, no matter what we decide, suffering doesn't just magically 'go away'.
     
    So what is this all for?  I'm not going to reiterate the whole eastern/western religious dialogue about our existence here.  I'm going to skip to the basics and make way more sense.
     
    This is all about me having an opportunity to do something life changing for other people.  This is all about me being worth my salt and the air I breathe.  This is about me deciding to stop being selfish and learning how to care about something and/or someone besides me.  I might not be very good at it, but I'm here to practice.  I'm here to notice that I can either cause pain or care about pain.  I've done both.  I hate to admit I'm very good at both.  I've noticed some people don't seem to realize the difference, but that we're all headed the same direction- we're all going to die.  And it doesn't matter in my eyes what we believe as much as what we did with the time we had while we are here.
     
    I really don't know if 'bad guys' are going to go to some kind of hell.  Honestly, I kinda think a lot of us would like some really nice people to go to hell just because we hate them.  Isn't that funny?  We can believe in punishments like that, but we don't realize we are stacking up our own charges against ourselves.  It's weird how we can be like the Electric Monk and believe in Good and still hope Bad against each other.
     
    This is across the board.  I don't care who you are, you are going through the exact same steps I am in this learning program.  It starts out with fire being hot and we burn ourselves.  It eventually turns into a 'heated' argument, or a 'hot' temper.  The same thing with cold.  Cold can kill if we have too much of it.  It kills our cells and we get gangrene.  It eventually turns into an 'icy' stare, or a 'cold' heart.  Everything we learn about Good and Bad we learn from experiences we have in these bodies.  Sometimes good and bad get mixed up.  Sometimes we'll do anything for drugs or friendship or money, because those things feel good.
     
    I have noticed what saves us all from utter destruction is our bodies.  They have to sleep, which takes up a pretty big chunk of our lives.  They have to eat, which, if you do the math, involves work or theft or whatever it takes to get food, which originally involved a great deal of time digging through the dirt or herding animals around or having to hunt.  Just because some of us get it easily in a restaurant or store doesn't mean it takes up less time, because now we have to work all day, or spend time learning to be a proper thief.  I once heard of a group of guys in our area that went to all the trouble to steal big air conditioners off of commercial buildings.  One of them was seriously injured and tried to sue a retail giant.  Woulda been so much easier to unload trucks and get workman's comp, but nooo....
     
    Anyway, we're all doing pretty much the same thing.  Breathing, eating, sleeping, and filling up the rest of our time multiplying, working, recreating, and generally annoying each other.  It seems so empty when you zoom out a little too far and see the bigger picture.  We're not all that different from worms writhing around in the soil.  We've only elevated 'awareness' to an art form, and I'm not sure the people around me are all that aware.
     
    So when something 'clicks' in your life, and you start seeing coincidences bunching around you like some episode of the Twilight Zone (like in Tim Allen's I'm Not Really Here), it's probably because you're being especially dense and the universe is having to get in your face to get your attention.  But if nothing is clicking in your life, have I got a surprise for you.  All you have to do is ASK.  I swear.  But there's a hitch.  Once you ask, you might get to find out what you want to know the hard way.  You might feel like your life turns into a roller coaster and you feel really resentful about it.  And then you'll get indignant and miss it all, because you'll be sitting there with your arms folded, your lips tight, and your jaw gritted, determined not to let *anything* dig you out of that nice little rut you call a belief system in your head.
     
    This next part is going to be the first time I've ever publicly shared what I'm about to say.  And I don't care what you think about it.
     
    Somewhere in my 30's I started digging through the public library for anything and everything I could find on actual paranormal experiences of any kind.  If it was weird, bring it on.  I had a sudden very strong feeling it was important to find out who I am, and whether this is all guesswork, or are we really getting somewhere?  I started with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and branched out in all directions from there.
     
    There was one book I can't recall the name of where a woman was having terrible nighttime horrors about drowning and would sleep in her closet.  I've drowned in a few of my dreams, so I became very absorbed in her quest to find answers.  A hypnotherapist regressed her into past lives, which I wasn't sure I could deal with, but during one regression she stopped at an in-between place.  When the therapist asked her where she was, she said she was in a room with the Eyes, and they were asking her questions.
     
    I threw the book across the room and curled up in my bed under my covers.  I never expected to run into anything like that in a ~book~.  I thought it was just my imagination all those years.
     
    I have a lot of experience with Eyes.  They started showing up when I was pretty small, and they frightened me very badly.  They mostly came in dreams, never really saying anything, but looking at me, and I knew I was supposed to be able to know something.  But I was terrified, and in all my dreams I ran.  I blamed the beginning of this on a Spaghettios commercial, and clowns.  (Is that why so many people are afraid of clowns?)
     
    When I was about ten, I dreamed of a white horse with a big blue eye on one hip.  It looked like the CBS logo, sorta plain, but very much an eye somehow.  She could turn and look at me with it.  She gave birth to a colt which had two blue eyes on one hip, and they could blink.  The colt turned and the eyes looked at me, and I ran screaming into the house and tried to hide in my room.  The eyes left the colt and came after me, right behind me, so I had to bury my face in my hands.  I'm not sure how it happened, but my hands were pulled away, my eyes were opened, and the blue eyes pressed right up against mine.  I have no idea how I didn't die in my sleep that night, I was so terrified.  I woke up almost in a state of shock.  But I knew without any doubt that I had been seen, looked at, and chased down by another Person, and forced to look back.  I never told anyone this.
     
    Many years later in my very late teens, my family was having an argument.  I was very angry myself, but walked off into the laundry room to start a load of laundry.  As the washer filled up and I stared at the water (typical aspie), I suddenly asked myself- Why am *I* upset?  The argument didn't even have anything to do with me.  It's not my stuff.  So why do I care?  Maybe I ~don't~ care.  And with a whoosh I suddenly felt free somehow, and it felt very good.  So as I closed the lid and turned, I gasped at two blue eyes without a face looking right at me not 2 feet away, a little above my own eye level, with a twinkle like someone was laughing at a private joke and smiling at me, and as soon as I saw them they closed and vanished.  I ran into the other part of the house and sat stunned and terrified, and didn't go back into that laundry room for some time, a couple of days I think.  I hadn't seen the eyes since the dream with the horse, but I recognized them immediately.  And this time I wasn't dreaming.
     
    So when I got to the part in that book about the Eyes, yes, I freaked out again.  That was MY secret.  As long as it was mine, I could convince myself it never happened.  But if someone else saw them too... omg, there really are eyes that watch me.
     
    At that time I was going to nursing school in a technical college where my youngest sister was getting her office management certification.  I met her between classes and asked her (for the first time in my life I was saying it out loud), if she'd ever seen the Eyes.  I about fell over when she turned white and said yes.  She'd been seeing them all her life, too.  And it turns out, so had my daughter.  They both described different eyes, but nonetheless, they were 3 dimensional eyes without faces that would appear and startle them.  Once we all got over the idea that we weren't alone with these experiences, we compared notes and came to the conclusion they weren't bad, and they seemed to come at times when we were supposed to 'know' something.
     
    Since then they've shown back up in my dreams a few times, this time in faces, and always looking right at me without speaking, and I would know it was time again to turn another corner in my thinking.  I've become so used to accepting this now that I no longer fear them, and I have a strong feeling I am blessed to see them.  I have no idea why, except I sometimes wonder if it's possible that before I came into this life that I arranged to have clues to help focus me at key moments.  I know that sounds weird, especially if you aren't used to the idea, but I've had a feeling since I was small that I'm here to say something, and I'm the only one who can say it from my viewpoint.  What am I supposed to say?  I don't know.  Maybe all I have to do is share what I've learned.  I just know it's important.  I used to think I'd write books and be on a best seller list, but now I realize that's not what this is about.  It's not about selling my thoughts and marketing myself.  It's about being honest and freely sharing to the whole world on search engines.  For the first time in human history, we can all share our brains and our souls almost instantaneously around the world.  I can ask anything I want and find it at my fingertips.  Maybe this is what I was born to do and be, along with all the stuff I've been learning along the way.
     
    Maybe there are a bunch of us out there feeling alone and wondering if anyone else thinks or feels the way we do.  Maybe there are a bunch of people like me looking for stuff I'm saying.  I see the referral hits coming in on my trackers like crazy on certain posts I've made, every day from all over the world.  Can it really be this easy to make a difference in someone else's life?
     
    YES.
     
    And I feel it is my calling to say it's time for all of us to stop being afraid now.  It's ok to feel how we feel, no matter how different we are.  It's ok to tell the truth, no matter how hard our lives have been.  It's ok to be honest and stop hiding who we are, and it's ok that we are on the autism spectrum.  It's ok to share what we think, how we think, and to say we LIKE it, no matter how bad or terrible some people think this is.
     
    And I think that goes for ALL mental diversities and brain and nervous system challenges.  So what if someone has OCD or Tourette's?  So what if ASD and ADD people are different?  GOOD.  We *need* them.  We need each other in all our different ways so that we can put our heads together and finally figure out why we are really here.  Because if we keep trying to 'fix' each other, we're going to evolve the nastiest form of global genocide that human history has ever seen.  Part of our function is to rise to challenge.  What makes us human is rising to challenge.  Take away our challenge, and humanity loses its soul.  If there is any point at all to synchronicity and angels and whatever you believe in, it's that we all count for something.  And if this is all a big cosmic accident, just keep in mind that the geek factor and the hyper workaholics are building this modern world for the rest of us to enjoy.  I don't know about you all, but I don't think air conditioning and the internet are accidents, and I appreciate them both every day.  God bless geeky people who invent things and obsess over details and workaholics and artists who slave away over form and function.  Without mental diversity we'd still be scratching in the dirt for food.
     
    I think the synchronicity is that with nearly 8 billion brains on the planet now, things are really gonna start happening.  I've seen so much change in my lifetime, my dad saw so much in his, and I'm seeing things now even science fiction writers never thought would be possible in their lifetimes.  I know life still sux for so many people, but I'm really excited about this.  Will poverty, disease, and famine really be wiped out in our lifetimes?  Probably not, but does that matter if we all still hate each other?
     

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I've started transferring my survey posts over to Surveypalooza so people coming in from search engines on mobile devices will be able to see the surveys.

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Apologies for the missing vids, another upgrade during the server migration swept through like a scan sweeping through the Enterprise. I'll fix those later, kinda busy...

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