Category: podcasts

Context will decide if you’re happy, miserable, rich or poor

the first thing for you to learn, if you EVER want to visit the vertical plane, is CONTEXT

this will likely be a series

dictionary: context = the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

ugliness…can you deal with it?

UGLINESS… CAN YOU DEAL WITH IT?

I talked to the driver of the community van. I asked if it was okay with him that I wanted to go shopping tomorrow because I was low on groceries. And I said my only concern wasn’t whether I can get in and out of the van but that I do look like a Frankenstein monster… my face, the visible parts of me. I didn’t know if it would be okay with him because I thought I would look scary to the other old people in the van. He said it didn’t bother him. I said yes but…

I realized where my question came from… from some 50 years ago…

In Hungary in the subway, at the endpoints of the escalator, there is a sign that says, “If you suffer from an ugly skin disease, please do not take the escalator.” I always heard that it was talking to me, that I should not take the escalator.

I never had anything wrong with my face but I heard that I’m disgusting and I make people want to throw up.

Why? I don’t know but when I was three and a half, and my mother called me a whore I was like a three and a half! What’s wrong with a 3 1/2 ? In a 3 1/2 year old’s world, the word “dirty” is the word that expresses that for me. No one ever told me I was a bad girl, so I was dirty. Not to mention the fact I’m Jewish and was called “dirty Jew.” 1

 

My ultimate flaw, in my mind, the word, is dirty… but dirty is outside.

But if you really look, you can be ugly inside. You can have an experience that it is visible, that it has, somehow, transferred to your outside and that’s unbearable… because we all have thoughts that are ugly (some more than others), intentions, impulses, cravings, sexual, anger or any other impulses, like greed. Everybody. No exceptions.

I’m reading book,  a series of sci-fi books where the main character has ESP–he can read minds. He experiences being a pariah, like somebody with leprosy. People don’t want to be close to him because they don’t want their minds read. Because they know they are ugly inside. Without making too big a leap, obviously I experienced ugliness inside. Because when I looked in the mirror years ago, there was nothing wrong with me and yet that subway sign about having the disgusting skin disease applied to me, at least in my world. Today when I remembered this, I started to sob.

This was very significant and interesting. I hadn’t remembered this piece about myself. But I have been noticing more and more to what degree people hate themselves. and to what degree people are trying to cover up their inner pimples.

One of the things that I do is bring it out into the open. They call that “being authentic about your inauthenticity”–at least that’s how Werner Erhard says it in his video. I am trying to live like that so that I don’t have see that escalator sign and suddenly not take the escalator… or stay inside… or not go shopping.

The story of ugly the cat is here –> https://mavensophie.com/story-of-ugly-the-cat/ on my other site.

be great in little things

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Your theme in the coming weeks is the art of attending to details. But wait! I said “the art.” That means attending to details with panache, not with overly meticulous fussing. For inspiration, meditate on St. Francis Xavier’s advice, “Be great in little things.” And let’s take his thought a step further with a quote from author Richard Shivers: “Be great in little things, and you will be given opportunity to do big things.” Novelist Tom Robbins provides us with one more nuance: “When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.”

10 hours in the emergency room

it’s really only what happened, small stuff. but the learning is tremendous

Transcript by LeGrande

10 Hours in the Emergency Room

Here I am again. Still in pain but with a cast on my arm.

Yesterday I spent ten hours at the emergency room. They took 30 X-rays. Out of the 10 hours, I waited for six and spent four inside. It was interesting because I had two completely opposing encounters.

One is I experienced myself delightful. That means I was full of delight despite the fact that I had to pee for hours and didn’t know where the bathroom was. And I was hungry because I didn’t have breakfast. I was hurting. They set the bones and gave me a lidocaine injection straight into my wrist. Ai-yi-yi…I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!

Some of the context that allowed me to be delightful is “This too shall pass.” I didn’t see this miserable, painful or tedious experience as filling my future. It was happening now and I can deal with anything that has a limited duration. That is a very useful attitude to have because I think most of us are more unhappy, miserable, bored, lazy or procrastinating because we cannot see that the nature of the universe is change.

It means nothing is permanent–neither pain nor happiness. If it’s not permanent, you will have thousands of opportunities to have it more, better, different, even strikingly different if you wish.

The main ingredient is this: there is nothing wrong, nothing needs to be fixed–not even the huge hospital bill they are going to give me. I am going to cross that bridge when I get there. I am going to negotiate a payment plan because their alternative plan is not getting paid at all. For a little while, I’m going to work to pay this bill which will probably be thousands of dollars based on the 30 X-rays they took and the six(!) doctors that saw me.

“This too shall pass.” That is the attitude you want to have.

What i don’t on the audio: good and bad… it will all pass. really