Reasons to Fear God

 I've been studying the Old Testament lately, the Hebrew Bible, specifically to gain an understanding of how the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God thinks. Time and time again, God makes it abundantly clear that the Jews are his special people and nobody else matters. When God promised the Holy Land to the Jews, it didn't matter that there were already people living there. When Joshua finally brings the Jews to the land flowing with milk and honey, they begin to obliterate anyone in their way. God tells them to kill men, woman, and children, take the spoils - the camels, asses, sheep, and goats, the gold and silver, and burn the place to the ground so that no one will ever even know there was a town there. This is how much God loves the Jews and the rest can go to hell. Actually, God never says anything about hell. He just says, "If you keep my commandments, and statutes, and judgments, and do them then ye shall live." And apparently, the rest of the world will just die. So, all the Christians who think they're are going to heaven are just going to die like the rest of us nonbelievers, because they're not Jews. 

But, then along comes Jesus with a whole new bunch of rules - you can eat anything you want and you never have to wash your hands before you eat. You don't have to keep the Sabbath holy. Love your enemies. Sometimes he would quote the law of Moses, and other times he would ignore it. Even Jesus was just interested, at first, in the lost lambs of Israel. He told his disciples to go out two by two preaching, but he specifically tells them not to preach to the gentiles. Because they're all going to hell anyway. 

God is capricious in the Old Testament, sometimes loving the Jews, and sometimes bent on destroying them for their wicked ways, specifically for worshipping other gods - God hates that, and expresses his jealousy many times in the Bible. Is it rational to be jealous of gods that are made of wood and stone? And God changes his mind - a couple of times he repents the evil that he planned on doing to the Israelites when things start looking better. How could he know everything if he couldn't foresee the Israelites repenting? This God has limitations. 

And God plays games with people's minds. He tells Moses to  send plagues upon the Egyptians for the release of the Israelites, and just when the pharaoh is about to submit, GOD hardens his heart, and he changes his mind. Over and over God lets Moses down. God could've just appeared to pharaoh and avoided the whole drama, but God seems to like drama. 

And then Moses, who has done a ton of heavy lifting for God, doesn't get to see the promised land - all because he struck a rock a second time when it didn't yield water the first time as God had told Moses. Really God? The Israelites make a golden calf to worship, but they all get to see the promised land. Moses, though, who led the Israelites from slavery, wandered with them for 40 years in the wilderness, wrote the Torah, and had a close, personal relationship with God, dies on Mount Nemo, within tantalizing sight of the Promised Land. If God is so petty with one of his greatest prophets, then how much stricter is he going to be with you? How many of you are sinless? This is a God to be feared.

And then there's Job. Another righteous man whom God allows to be tortured by thee devil, just because God is so sure that Job won't crack. The devil claims that Job is just righteous because God blessed him with great flocks, children, slaves, and property. So, God allows the devil to kill his family - children, slaves, and flocks, afflict him with sores, and leave him in misery just to get him to curse God. At one point Job wants to die. And God is allowing all this. So, if he loved Job and let him be treated thus, just to prove a point to the devil, how is he going to treat you who are not even Jewish, and maybe not even righteous? Fear God!

Through the Prophet Samuel, God chooses Saul to be the first king of the Jews. But after a while, along comes David who wins the hearts of the people by slaying Goliath and having God on his side. So, once again, God sends an evil spirit into Saul and Saul decides David is his mortal enemy, at first trying to slay him with a javelin, then later trying to destroy David's new army with his army. But, it's God making Saul homicidal. So, God initially loved and blessed Saul, but later he abandoned him and Saul died by falling on his own sword. How much does God love and bless you?

Back in the beginning, God sets Adam and Eve up in Paradise, but instructs them not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So, if they didn't already have the knowledge of good and evil, then they wouldn't have known that disobeying God was a sin. They wouldn't know what sin was. They were like animals. Fruit is good. I know it's all just allegory, but it's just God again not acting rationally. (Have you ever considered that, if man were created in God's image - then God must be naked, for that is how he created them.) 

And why does sometimes God speak to people directly, and at other times he speaks through prophets. Even King David, who asked God direct questions and got direct answers, sometimes was told of God's wishes through Nathan, the prophet. Or God would speak through an angel, like when he couldn't be bothered to tell Abraham not to murder his son. He let the angel do it. I mean, all God had to do was tell Abraham to stop - but maybe he thought that the angel was more dramatic. And, as we have seen, God likes drama. How dramatic is your life? 

God is anything but loving. The God of the Old Testament is not the God that Jesus talks about. Jesus' God is a loving, compassionate, forgiving God. The God of the Old Testament only loves the Jews, and then, only when they are worshipping him. He destroyed everyone but Noah and his family once. He couldn't have loved all the people he destroyed. And we are a lot more wicked now than we ever were then. Who knows what other crazy notions God has in mind? Christians would say that fear of God is good. But the kind of fear that God inspires is crazy-guy-with-a-gun in a school fear, and we certainly don't need that. God is scary because of his unpredictability. God is scary because of his poor track record. God is scary for the way that he has treated his own special people, allowing them to be taken into slavery, to be persecuted for centuries, and allowing the Holocaust. And God is scary because so many people believe in him without a shred of evidence. Fear God - indeed.

The Movie of Your Life

A few weeks ago I had one of those consciousness-shifting moments that come along all too rarely. I was doing the dishes, which I like doing by hand even though we have a dishwasher. Warm water and bubbles - what's not to like? So anyway, I was looking down at my hands, covered in suds, washing a plate when I was struck with the idea that if my eye were a camera that could record what I saw, then I would be the director of the film of my life. I looked again at the dishes in the sink. I saw the composition of the shot. I thought of how it could be better, more beautiful. Rearranging things, I made the sink a work of art and then mentally called, "Action!" I moved intentionally, gracefully, beautifully, my hands now dancing on the screen in my head. I considered each glass, plate or fork and how best to convey the essence of what it was. Everything became a prop and the sink became a theater.

It was then that I came to appreciate Ikebana. Bear with me. As a young teen, my family was host to two Japanese exchange students. There was a reception for the group and they performed some traditional music and Ikebana, the art of flower arranging. And I thought, "What?" How do "art" and "flower arranging" even appear in the same sentence? I watched as a diminutive girl dressed in a kimono stuck some flowers in a vase. At least that's how I saw it at the time. And then we clapped. Sure, they said something about the symbolism of heaven and earth and blah,blah,blah ... I was just a dumb kid. I didn't see how this was art.

And then, back at the sink, I saw that I was still only washing dishes, but now I was doing it with intention. Every fiber of my being was invested in making a beautiful experience. The way I moved my hands, the way I held the dishes, the way I used the sponge - it was all intentional. And because of the intention, it became beautiful - I was almost moved to tears.

So flower arranging was art because of intention. Every fiber of the arranger's being was similarly invested in making beauty. I so want to experience Ikebana anew. It is more than just a functional art - it is theater.

And then the dishwashing was through. But the concept broadened and I thought to myself, "What a beautiful way to go through life - seeing as if looking through a movie camera. In every moment you can register your intention. Be aware of the way your shot is composed, the other actors, the dialogue, the scenery, the music, even the lighting. You have control over the film of your life. You can make it look however you want it, as long as every moment is intentional.

The other day, my partner and I were talking about how, when we go to the gym, we always find a certain someone who catches our eye and makes us want to keep looking. Today, I had one of those experiences, but to the Nth power. Before I go on, I'm in love with my partner and wouldn't even consider anyone else, but we are both appreciators of beauty and I know she would have agreed with me.

There was not a thing about this young woman that did not appeal to me in the deepest way. I'm not going to describe her here, because everyone has their own idea of perfection. It was not just my body screaming, "I need to have sex with this woman!" - it wasn't that. I'll tell you what I think it was.

From where do we get our sense of what is beautiful? Why do some people appeal to us in that deeper way? When we are born, we cannot see much. It takes time for our eyes to work at their best. So visual beauty is not a genetic inheritance. We have to learn what is beautiful as we learn how to see. Before we are running around the house like wild Indians (I hope that's not a racial slur these days, if so, I apologize, my brothers) we are held, hopefully by loving arms. We learn to look into the eyes of the people who are kind to us. We don't realize it, but a record of that face connected to that good feeling stays imprinted on our brain. Any time a person is kind to us, we get that good feeling and it is stored, along with the face associated with it. Over time, our ideal face becomes an amalgam of every kind face we've stored throughout our lives.

So, the beautiful face is nothing but a comparison with all the kind faces of our pasts. It's why some people can find beauty in fat cheeks, or droopy eyes or large ankles, or whatever. Beauty is only skin deep after all. Well, bone and tissue, too. We filter out all the too large noses and funny ears and what we're left with is an average human look - a beautiful face. But so many of us are not average - we have those large ears and funny noses. There's always someone who's going to be imprinted to like exactly what you have. Beauty is overrated as a reason to partner with a person. But kindness certainly is not rated highly enough.

 Of course, many is the time when I've gotten to know a particularly beautiful woman who turns out to be less-than-beautiful in her soul. Or she has an annoying voice. Or is a Republican. I left the gym today not knowing a thing about her. I thought, on my walk home, if I weren't in a committed relationship, would I even talk to a woman like that? Most probably I would never have the nerve, unless I were manic, but if I did, what would I say? It was then that I came up with the greatest pick-up line ever:

"I've never proposed to someone on a first date before, but if you'll go out with me (sincere puppy-dog eyes)...I just might."

Thinking more about the idea of kindness, there are not that many people in our lives who are actually kind to us. I don't mean just the thousands of people who do no harm to us, but those who actually do positive things for us and give us that good feeling. If we are lucky, our immediate family will be kind to us. Aunts and girl cousins perhaps. Then babysitters (again, if we're lucky). And the handful of really good friends we make in our lives. Sure, there will be infinite instances of kind acts - someone holding a door for you, etc., but you're not going to imprint those things. The imprint of kindness happens when we are young and our minds and personalities are most energetically forming. Your idea of beauty may be an average of only a few dozen faces! It's why we often end up with people who resemble, even a little, our mothers and fathers.

When we act in a kind way towards others, we may be enacting an evolutionary mechanism that knows that if we imprint kindness on other people's brains that we are more likely to be chosen as a mate. It may go way back in our evolutionary history. The early primate who shared his food would be more likely to get sex.  We would remember the face of those with whom we shared food and we would be more likely to be able to pass on our genetic code. That's the prime directive in all animals - pass on the genetic code. It's what we all have in common. So, we are kind to people because it makes us more attractive as a potential mate. Modern humans have evolved to where we can exhibit kindness to anyone, whether or not mating potential is involved. It's a beautiful thing about humans. We can be kind when it gets us nothing in return. We just like the feeling it gives us.

Be anything you want in life, but above all, be kind.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I've never felt like I fit in. Sometimes this has been something to celebrate and sometimes to cry about. There are times when you want to fit in as a child - at social events, playing sports, at school. But even though I was a very active child, busy with countless extracurricular activities, I always felt alone. It was as if I wasn't having the same experience as everyone else - I was processing it differently. I always excelled at the things I did solo, like music, art, shot-put. And I just became average when I played team sports or did music with other people. I just felt I never got what life was all about for people. I just knew they weren't living in my head.

It wasn't until I was about thirty that I was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, but it made much of my life make sense. I really wasn't having the same experience as everyone else. My brain was processing things differently. Knowing this put me on a path towards understanding how my brain worked and why I felt, thought and experienced the things I did. Here I am almost twenty years later, and I really am feeling like I've solved the puzzle that is me. Meds and therapy helped immensely. So did my constant day-to-day attention to the workings of my mind.

We, as human animals, are products of our need. We need food and shelter from the elements. We need attention and love. We think we need a lot more, like new shoes and a killer stereo system, but that is mostly what advertising tells us we need to be as good as others. When we wear sunglasses when it's not even sunny, we're filling the need to be thought of as cool or pretty. When we drive an expensive car, we're filling the need to be thought of as wealthy. When we do Yoga, we're filling the need to be thought of as spiritual and healthy. We do so much so that other people will think of us in certain ways. Our needs define us.

Recently, After starting a new job that pays my bills, gives me free time, and never feels like work, I began to think about my own needs. I used to have a need to make art and music and to write stories. Now I realize that I wanted to be thought of as intelligent, and those were ways in which I could make my intelligence manifest. If I write this song, people will like me. If I paint this picture, people will like me. If I write this story, people will like me. My need was obviously for people to like me. I think it is a universal need. But I have come to like myself, and anyone who really pays attention to who I am will probably like me too. I'm sure of it. So I no longer have the same degree of need to be liked. I suppose I still have it a little.

Realizing how few my needs really were was liberating. I need food and I need to be loved, and I have those things. So I'm at an important crossroads in my life. I am as happy as anyone could be, and my only real need is to teach it, to share it as best I can. I realize that there is no formula I can teach to be happy. I learned only how I can be happy with the life I have led. It doesn't mean you can do the same with your life. My solution took 49 years of living to come to. But maybe we are all more similar than I imagine. Maybe you need just a few words to help you on your journey.

First - You're going to die. You have to embrace that. Your life is a very finite thing. I don't believe in an immortal soul, so for me, these 49 years have been a singular miracle and I hope to continue the miracle for as long as I can. But I know I may die today. Any minute. They talk about "making your peace with God" before you die. I think this means opening up the vault of your mind and examining every action and finding the things you've left unfinished and either letting them go, because they won't mean anything after you die, or taking action to remedy them. We have a need to be forgiven. Whose forgiveness do you need? Ask for it now. Then you can embrace your mortality, not merely accept it.

Second - Examine your needs. How many needs drive you to act in ways other than your true nature? How many needs are driven by hunger? By sex? By anger? Try not to be a slave to your needs. You are an animal, and you can just look at other animals and see how very few their needs are. Embrace your animal nature and see that food and sex sometimes do drive all animals. But be aware of your human nature, too. It is human nature to want status and money and acclaim. These are wants, not needs, but they're closely tied to our need to mate. Even if we have no children and never plan to have any, our brains are programmed to find mates. We try to attract them in everything we do, even if we are in committed, monogamous relationships.

Third - Don't live in the past. Everything you've ever done is a part of who you are in the present. Take some time to let those things catch up with you, they are all weights dragging behind you and impeding your progress. Either cut them loose or find the strength to carry them. Do not let them weigh you down. I think everyone's biggest weight is their relationship with their family, and most often, their parents. Your parents didn't appear out of thin air. They are the product of other parents who were also just doing the best they could with what they'd been given. We are part of a long line that reaches back to when no one really knew anything at all about life. We all just learn a little bit and pass it on, and hopefully  life keeps getting better with every generation. Your parents might have been lousy parents. Or they might have been abusive or neglectful parents. It was not their choice. Their generation just had not learned enough to be better parents. At some point, if you didn't have the perfect parents, you have to cut the line and not let their actions color everything you do. They just gave you a push, and now you're pedaling your own bicycle and can go where you please. You are in charge of your life, not them. So when you feel you should turn left, because your father is making you feel that way, know that you can turn any way you want. They are behind you, and even if they gave you a shaky start, you now know how to ride.

Fourth - Feel the connection. We all evolved from the same initial life form. Whether that was God or just some random happening, all life is related and interconnected. Every person on the planet is your relation. We have the same life within us. People might act like strangers, but that's because they take life for granted. Every interaction with a stranger is a reconnecting with the spirit of life. We all want the same thing - for life to continue. It's all every life form wants. We just keep making more life. And as humans, we get distracted by material possessions and think that that's what we really want - that will make us happy. But that's not where happiness comes from. Happiness comes from letting go of all desires. Cut the past off as if with a knife and do not project into the future. You are alive. That's all. That's all there is. In the present moment, you have no identity, no personality, no baggage, no fear. You just are. And you are on a planet of living things. And they are all a part of your experience of being. Just stop life in this instant, and realize that everything right now is perfect. Right now, you are without needs of any kind. You don't even need to eat right now. Just let your body breathe - you don't even have to try. Watch your breath. Feel the life.

Fifth - Confront your fears. We most often try to ignore our fear so it will go away. But it lives in an unconscious part of our mind and is present in everything we do. We avoid facing fears with the hope that they will somehow magically diminish. But the only way to get past fear is by confronting it head on. You need to admit to yourself what you're really afraid of: You're afraid that people will not like you. That is everyone's basic, fundamental fear. "People may not like me if they know the things I've done. People will judge me and I will be considered less-than." Our egos want to be big. They can only be as big as our most shameful action unless you divorce yourself from your actions by letting fear drop away. Recognize your fear, then go on without it. If you don't take the time to recognize it, it will live like a little imp inside of you, poisoning all your best intentions. We all just want to be loved. No one loves the little imp. Let it go and let people see who you truly are.

Sixth - Let people see who you truly are! You are an amazing amalgam of experiences, unique in all the world. There is every reason on earth to celebrate that! Find the things in life that make you feel alive and explore them. Learn new things. Grow your brain. And communicate! No one will ever know everything about you, but after you've let go of fear and shame, you are a magical being and you need to let that being out in the world. If you just wake up each morning and don't feel instantly alive, then you're missing something. Tomorrow, when you wake up, let this be your first thought: I am alive! It is a miracle! Then take that attitude out to the the world and share it with everyone you see. You don't have to say or do anything different. Just feel the miracle every second, and other people will feel it with you.

I am living my own miraculous life. I feel as if I've won the game. All I had to do was think about it for half a century. Now I just want to share it. This is too good a feeling not to share. Life is so much sweeter when we're connected to other people. I hope that I have connected with you. Sometimes I feel like a stranger in a strange land. There are people all around me who seem miserable. And they're all just trying to fit in. And I want to tell them all how easy happiness is. How easy life is. I want to live in a world full of happy people, and I don't think that's just a pipe dream. For now, I may not fit in, but the way in which I don't fit in is definitely something to celebrate!

How to be Free from Emotional Pain

It is a nebulous statement to just say that I'm happy. Happiness is such a vague notion and can mean so many things. There is no common scale to say I'm 93% happy or 350 degrees happy. So when I tell people that I'm happy, it really doesn't mean much. But I've realized that for the last 10 years or so of my life, I've been free of emotional pain. Maybe that is more concrete.

Emotional pain is worse than physical pain because it colors every conscious moment. It also exacerbates physical pain and I think it sometimes even causes physical pain. I've had two bouts with debilitating back pain in my life - the first while I was still feeling emotional pain, the second when I was free of it. The first made me miserable for several years and seemed incurable. I had cortisone shots and physical therapy and was taking 1600mg of ibuprofen a day. I eventually got better, but it wasn't until my second incident that I realized that it was fear I was feeling more than pain.

The second incident left me unable to even support my own weight standing up. The pain was incredible. But because I had beat my emotional pain, the physical pain didn't bother me that much and I was able to separate my mind from my body. It was as if my car just needed a new alternator or something. You don't feel psychological or emotional pain about your car. My body was just like my car - it got my mind around in the world, but It wasn't my mind. My mind was in tip top shape. I think I could have very serious physical problems and still be happy, because I'm free from emotional pain.

So how do you get free from emotional pain? First, I think I had to forgive my parents. So many of us blame our parents for our current lives. My parents did the best they could. Yes, they could've been better, they could've paid more attention to me, could've not spanked me, could've helped guide me into adulthood. But they did not have the tools, probably because they didn't have examples in their own parents. I take responsibility now for who I am, instead of blaming them. I have the power to be whomever I want and to act in ways that I think are best. I have taken what my parents gave me and molded it into a shape that I like. I have total power over my life and my parents have no sway anymore. I love them for the good things they taught me, and don't blame them for the things they missed.

Second, You have to stop identifying with what Eckhardt Tolle calls "the pain body." We have all suffered emotional pain in our lives. We tend to carry that pain with us and let it inform every activity. When we have a new situation that may cause pain, we lump it together with our previous pain and it becomes a super-pain. We let our pain accumulate into a giant snowball of pain, keeping pain from the past as part of our present. This amplifies what might be trivial pain into something which makes us say, "Woe is me! I have soooo much pain!" Our pain bodies are of tremendous size and weight.

If we can live in the present, then we can leave all of our past pain behind and meet every new pain as just a tiny thing that we can brush aside and go on with our lives. Of course, we still will face monumental pains - breakups, deaths, injuries. But these pains will be tolerable and only last for the time that they need to for you to learn their lesson if you don't add them to the previous pain body. Every pain has a lesson to teach. If you can see the pain for what it is, and not add it to your emotional pain, you can learn the lesson and become stronger for it. In the present, everything is perfect, even if you're in pain. If you can accept your pain as a passing thing, then it is just like being on white water rapids - they're challenging and you have to be 100% present to keep the river from taking you, but you know that there is smoother water ahead and soon you'll have to paddle to keep going.

Some people say pain is an illusion. When something is emotionally painful, our psyches feel threatened, just as when something is physically painful, our bodies feel threatened. Physical pain tells us that something in our body needs attention. Emotional pain tells us that something in our psyche needs attention. When we were babies, we were born without personalities - we had genetic predispositions for certain reactions, but those weren't expressed right away. As we grew, we experienced outer stimulus, mostly warm, soft, nurturing stimulus. But then we began doing things innocently that brought negative reactions from our parents or caregivers. They responded with raised voices or physical violence. Some were also exposed to sexual abuse. We also did not get 100% attention every moment, so we felt neglected. This was our only experience of life, so we didn't think anything was out of the ordinary.

Our emotional pain has deep roots. We feel so much of it because we don't always see its cause. It started to grow before we could identify it as wrong. Then later, as adults, when we would feel emotional pain, we didn't see the connections with our early childhood experiences, and so were mystified why it hurt so much. If you can see that fear of pain is at the root of pain itself, you can get over it. We are afraid that we will feel abandoned, or physically or sexually threatened, or neglected. These are the things we felt as babies and they established a base-line for our pain. Every pain we feel as adults is compared to those pains, even though we may not see the connection.

We are much stronger people as adults. But if we are still attached to our infantile pain, we remain weak. We can now choose how to respond to pain. We can separate physical pain from emotional pain. We can feel pain and then learn its lesson and move past it. We can live without fear of pain. Fear is worse than actual pain. Fear keeps us from experiencing a thing fully. Fear keeps us from learning the lessons of life. It keeps us from growing. When we fear pain, we don't take risks, and it is when we take risks that we grow.

So, third, you have to let fear fall away. Easier said than done? Not really. The way to conquer fear is to face it. Dive off of that 40 foot cliff into cold, clear water. Consider the consequences, but then do what you think is best. Live in the present. In the present, everything is just how it ought to be. Learn to accept the way the world is, the way your life is. Don't bring fear everywhere you go. Live bravely. Recognize that your fears are ancient - they are fears of a child inside of you. Instead of reaching that inner child, say goodbye to him. Thank him for teaching you valuable lessons, but then part company saying, "I am a new person, and I have no emotional fears." Start you life right now. You are equipped to handle any situation. Identify your childhood fears and see how they have presented themselves in your adult life. The same fears have probably surfaced time and time again. You fear abandonment. You fear physical or sexual pain. These are the fears that keep occurring over and over in your life. There are not a countless number of fears or pains. There are just a few.

About ten years ago now, with the help of meds and some great therapists, I became free of emotional pain and have remained so. When fear comes up, I recognize it, learn its lesson and then let it float down the river. I recognize where the pain or fear comes from and that helps me put it in a little compartment that is separate from me. It's as if you can put the fear or pain in a little boat and let it float away. You don't have to keep it all with you. Your pain body may be huge. But if you can separate yourself from it, you can face any challenge. You are a strong, intelligent, fully capable adult. Start your life now. Free from pain. Your old pain is past. Go forward without fear.

Free Time

I've never liked the phrase, "Time is money." We all have a finite amount of time on Earth and, like money, we can spend time or waste time, save time or invest time. So maybe the phrase should go, "Time is like money." But to equate the two is to devalue time, because money is an artificial construct.

There was a time when there was no money. There was nothing but time, and it was always free. Our time had value when we used it to get food or make love. That was all we were about as we evolved as proto-humans. Food and sex, like most animals. But, eventually, we started to trade things we did with our time for things others did with their time. I spent my time hunting this deer which I'll trade you for those wool blankets you made. We had to decide how much hunting equaled how many blankets. Things and time began to have value.

Then our symbolic powers evolved enough to say that a symbolic object such as a coin was worth a given amount of work or goods. Looking back through history we can see that monetary value is arbitrary because a dollar now is not what a dollar once was, or a pound or a shekel or what have you. Once, a day's work may have been worth a dollar, but that dollar would buy you a lot of things. If you worked 8 hours and slept 8 hours that left you with 8 hours of free time. If the work was worth a dollar, then the time must have been worth a dollar. But you weren't earning a dollar for it, so we considered it free time. We were also free from the enslavement that our jobs might have been. 8 hours to be free. It was as if we had a gift of time.

Until recently I felt as if I had very little free time. My work hours were such that on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, I got home too late to use any time. I had Thursday off, but I was teaching a class in the middle of the day and the evening's were devoted to couples time, which, while pleasant, was not free. My Saturday off went all too quickly, because that was when I painted and wrote and made music and worked out and went shopping and did laundry, and there was always so much to get done, that the time never felt free and I always ran out of it before I could do all that I wanted to do.

Now, all of a sudden I find myself in a new job which has an odd schedule, and I find myself inundated with time. I deliver express mail in the morning and then have 4 1/2 free hours until I have to do the reverse route in the afternoon. I stop at a truck stop, so my options are limited, but the time is such a gift! I read a bit, study for the MCAT because I still have the idea of medical school in my head, have my lunch, and then I write. I've already finished the second draft of a novel I'd been working on for a long time. And now I'm working on my philosophy book, writing down all the things I think about the process we call life. I'm not sure what its eventual fate will be, but I realized that I've been in conversation with myself about the nature of reality all my life and I've come to certain conclusions. But they just exist in my head. I feel like they will never have a value unless  they're expressed and I guess writing them down is the first step. If I just die and never express my thoughts then what was the good of thinking them? So it feels like I'm getting paid to have a few hours of structured writing time 6 days a week. That's like a dream!

And then, I'm home by 5:30 or six every day, giving me even more free time. I'm finding that I can now choose what to do with my time - a luxury that I don't remember ever having. Time to me is worth so much more than money, so I feel like a rich man. A person needs time to reflect. When we are so busy with life that we don't have a moment to even appreciate time, we become mechanical. I see so many people who live for their jobs because they can't see how to survive otherwise. And then they squander whatever little time they have. Stop right this moment and be aware of it. Take in your surroundings. Feel the air, hear the sounds, really look at where you are. Check in with your body, your breathing, your pulse. Calm your nervous energy for a moment. Relax. Just for a moment. Doesn't it feel right? That moment can be so valuable - worth so much more than money. It is beyond price. That time you just took is my gift to you. It is a gift you can claim again and again. And it is free. A moment of real awareness is worth many days of hard work. If you step out of the stream of time for just a moment and appreciate all of creation, you will be rich too.

Money is just an idea. But free time is worth so much more.

Epiphanies

Life is full of epiphanies. Sometimes they hit you subtly, sometimes with a bang to the head. Childhood is chock full of them, as everyday brings a new wonder. But we didn't see them as revelations then - we were just filling up our empty heads with whatever came our way. As adults, the epiphanies are more spread out and poignant. When you just instantly know something or realize it in a new way it can be transforming. I've had several life-changing revelations lately, if I can call them that.

The first I wrote about previously in a post entitled, "My New Religion." It struck me like a thunderbolt that my beliefs were not the beliefs I grew up with. The change happened over decades, but the realization was instantaneous. I was brought up Catholic and went through 12 years of Catholic school. I was an altar boy and always did well in my religion classes. I was pretty immersed in what Catholics believed and though I questioned a lot of it, even as a child, if there were such a thing as a Catholic test, I would pass it with flying colors. But then I had the epiphany that outside of the general morality of Catholicism, I really shared very little with Catholics in terms of belief. I don't believe that Jesus was God except in the way that everyone is part of God (see earlier post). I don't believe he rose from the dead. I don't believe in a Father in heaven or that Mary was free from sin or was a virgin. I basically don't believe any doctrine of Catholicism at all. I wholly accept Catholics, as long as they are loving people, but I share very little with them.

My second recent epiphany was that I want to become a doctor. It was an early ambition of mine, but was squelched by this and that, and overshadowed by my strong desire to be a creative person. I don't know why those two things had to be mutually exclusive. And my mother didn't help with saying often, "We're not the Kennedy's" whenever I had some grand design.

(I was doing some research on Brian Boru, the first king of a united Ireland from whom all O'Brien's descend and I found out that his father was from the clan of O'Kennedy. So, mom, you might not be a Kennedy, but I am, in name and spirit).

So my ambition to become a doctor came directly from the epiphany about religion. The only thing I know about what a God might possibly want is that He wants life to continue. It's the only theme that is present in the world. All life, from microorganisms to the great whales, wants to continue. It is programmed in us. We'll never know why, but I want to be a part of that. We want our own individual survival and we want the survival of our species. Some of us further want the survival of every species because we see how interdependent we all are. But sometimes I wonder, if the polar bear were to go extinct, that would be sad, but it wouldn't affect our survival. Maybe the grand design doesn't need every species. Obviously, many didn't make it. No one misses the dodo. Or the mammoth.

So, as a doctor, I see myself helping life to continue. I'm thinking about psychiatry, since it has already had a profound effect in my life. Since I didn't have kids, and am not helping life to go on in that way, I want to help other people live the best lives they can, be as happy and healthy as they can be and be a richer part of the world we're in.

My most recent epiphany stems from the first two and has had such shock waves that I'm still in awe of what I've found out. All my life I have felt the need to make art. In school I used to draw all over my desk all the time. I would draw in text books and on scraps of paper. And musically I felt I wanted to perform at every chance, from school plays to church choirs to writing my own music to playing in bars and clubs. I felt the need to create so strongly that I never questioned it. I didn't know why I had to, I just had to. As an adult artist there came a time when I decided that I would make a point to paint every day. It would not be just a hobby, it would be like a religious practice. My identity was cemented when I made that decision. There were times when friends would want to go out and I would say, "No, I've got to paint." It was my vocation, my reason for living. I was always searching for ways to make my work better and settled on the idea that it was a life-long quest, and that I would always be learning.

But then last week, I had the epiphany. I no longer have the need to paint. I still have the desire to paint, because I thoroughly enjoy the quest for better expressions of myself. But I don't have the need. I think my need was for people to pay attention to me, to think me intelligent and talented. I grew up fourth in a family of five kids where I didn't get that much attention. So as I grew, I craved it and the itch was scratched by art. It became part of my identity and I felt a sense of self-validation when I would do something I considered worthy. But that need for attention is gone. Painting doesn't really help anyone - it's just entertainment. I will still paint, but my painting will be different. It will be more intentional. I used to think that everything I did was so brilliant, but I just don't see that anymore.

We all have genius - we just have to recognize it and nurture it. My genius is not about painting or writing or music, as I thought it was for so many years. My genius is in communication. And in my life, I don't use that genius enough. I have amazing dialogues with myself, but so rarely do I have them with anybody else anymore. What good is a head full of knowledge and novelty if it isn't shared? So psychiatry seems to be the avenue where I can put my knowledge, and hopefully the wisdom it has engendered, to good use.

I feel free from the shackles of my own making. I used to feel that if I didn't keep painting, I would lose my identity. And some day, I felt, if I kept learning, I would truly make a masterpiece. Now I see that painting is just one of the tools in my box. Just as music is. And writing. If I were suddenly unable to do any of these things, I wouldn't lose my identity. I suppose that is what the epiphany was all about - that my self-identity is fully formed. I know who I am. I know what my tools are. And I know what to do with them. I know what I believe. It has taken 49 years, but I know who I am. And I am pleased to meet me.