Social Media

I withdrew from social media again.  I don’t feel safe.  It feels like the Maoist revolution is taking place and censorship has gone to a greater level. All I read about is persecution of celts and Christians and support of Hamas terrorists.  Meanwhile the ‘bots’ don’t see humor and declare humor as bad. It’s like the concrete thinkers of Paget’s intellectual development have declared the abstract thinkers the enemies.  It is appalling that the freedom convoy folk are still persecuted by the courts by the Antifida and BLM. Marxists domestic terrorists got a free pass. I hate how the BLM and Hamas people disrupted Pride parades and wanted the police removed.

I liked law and order. I don’t want the streets filled with bullying genuflecting gangs.  I believed there are sidewalks and roads and bike lanes and if people want to have prayer lanes then they can go to city hall and petition for them.  I believe in civilization but feel that is called hate speech today.  In England Christians are going to jail while rapists and pedophiles go free.  I fear that will come here.  The ‘catch and release’ program causes me to fear being on the streets. 

I’m old and being punched and kicked by a gang can break a hip or knee if not kill me. The idea of spending a year in physiotherapy to be able to walk again frightens me.  When I was attacked at lunch time by a fellow threatening to kill me and I stood up to him facing his muscular dance of threat and violence I left uninjured. It was a random thing. He’s a violent young man who cowardly attacks old men. The police could do nothing. It was a close call.  When I reported it the first question was ‘what did you do to provoke him’.   It’s the same question the Israelis seem to be asked after they retaliated again the terrorist attacks by Palestiania Hamas.  I exist.  Some people don’t want me to exist.   That shouldn’t be an IQ test especially when I’m phone 911 crisis line.  

So today I am afraid. 

I woke up and it was rainy and cloudy. I was grateful to be alive. I’m aware of time now.I sense an end which makes every day so much more precious. I don’t think I did, but it feel like I might have squandered some of my life as a youth, not realizing one day there might be a limited amount. I lived life like it was an endless ingredient, like I was immortal. My soul is. And yes I believe I will live beyond death. I could die each night when I go to sleep.  There are many considerations of perceptions.  Reincarnation, life after death, multiple dimensions.  I pray to know God and have the power to carry out God’s will. I want to know what God’s will for me is. I want to align my will with God’s .  Thy will be done.  

I started reading Sources of Christian Selff, edited by James Houston and Jens Zimmerman.  I’ve moved and this book surfaced. It was a Christmas gift from my friend John Chirisitansen who I dearly miss. Ir recently listened to the audio book Breathing Underwater by Richard Rohr.  John had given me the book years again and I’d read it then but enjoyed the audio book just as much. 

I sat and prayers on the rug in my new motorhome. I say the Lord’s Prayer to begin. I meditate on the repetion of a word and focuse on my breathing. I learned my meditation techniques from Paramahansa Yogananda through Self Realization Fellowship. I learned later that Augustine taught the same prayer techniques .  When I was in church it was all lecture and talk.  Simpler said, prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening.  I liked Herbert Benson MD’s research.  

There is still so much I have to learn.  I am greateful for this life.  There is love and fear and Jesus said do not be afraid. Yet when I look at the election and the politics of th world I realize it’s all about my pay grade and my interest is doom zooming. I’ve been watching social media for animals stories, and humor and beautiful models and cutting edge physics and technology and geography . But I will see a new absurdity and share it and be punished by a low brow who can’t appreciate a higher level of humor.  Every thing is a cognitive distortion in the censor police mind, black and white, ridgin , and no sense of the grey. 

I am by nature of my education, profession and age an extremely minority. I have the sense that social media is all about gangs and mostly that’s about set and violence.  Humor has no place in that world.  I remember when the joke about Marxist feminism was ‘what’s a feminist>’.  A woman without humor.  Now everyone is like Greta Thurnbery angry .  I remember a doctor saying ‘if you don’t see the problem I see on a blank page then that’s an even bigger problem.’  He has such a sense of humor.  

I’m going to walk the dog.  

I was upset to see a woman arrested for having pepper spray after fighting over a dark man who beat her and tore off her clothes but she escaped before he raped her only to have the police arrest her for having pepper spray. Meanwhile the next feed showed a man sexually violating the tailpipe of a parked car in public.  I remember the boy who shot the fellow shooting at him and how it was years before he was freed from the false accusations and terror that followed.

Just as Marxist and communist and nazi terrorism teachings the victim victimizer equation always goes to the ‘poor me’ of the victimizer. The psychopath always says you force me to rape and steal and kill .  There is no accountability in these political groups today. Justin Trudeau was the greatest gas lighter in parliament . I thought he should wear a white wife beater t shirt when he talke to women given his tone and arrogance.  But he’s gone and there’s is hope for less bad drama. 

Thank you God for my life today.  It’s raining and I was planning on walking the dog before the rain began and here I’ve spent time on fear and resentment.  I’m off in the dreary and so affected by sunshine. On sunny days I’m optimistic.  Actually it’s so beautiful, the lush green in the park outside that I really must appreciate how the plant must feel. They also like their carbon dioxide .  I’m enjoying Oxygen. I’m only taxed if I exhale .  Inhaling is great but I must not joke. That could get me fined or thrown in jail.  It was said the ones with real power are the ones who cannot joke about.  

My Jewish friend says he’s afraid to go out because he never knows whose whose waiting to be offended and from what century have the come.  We have immigrants now from countries who haven’t experienced the Magna Carta, others who object to the French and AMerican reovolution and so many who don’t believe is civil rights or the cultural revolutions of the 60’s and 70’s.  

These are confusing times. I just want to help people be well, over come their depression, anxiety and get free of drugs and alcohol abuse and know if their brain and body are well and it’s not them but the world that its off.  

Thank you God for this day. Thank you God for all your blessings.  Thank you Jesus

June 9, 2020 The uncertainty continues

I awake to a new day. Rain is loud on the roof. The furnace kicks in.  I notice my back hurts still.  My faith is in the new chair. There were times I had to hang upside down to solve the sprain.  Everyday I do something different. The anti inflmatories work. Manipulation works.  Massage. Everything helps.

I’m here seeking God.  I know God in a variety of ways. Intellectually I accept that God is creator and he has created from himself. I live and breathe in God. I am God stuff myself.  God is all.  It’s intellectual. It’s intuitive. It’s emotional. God as mother, father,brother, and son.  I am co creator in creation. Does the butterfly think the philosopher or the philosopher think the butterfly.  Each day I ask to know God’s will and for the power to carry that out.  I want to do the next right thing. I want to love rather than fear. I want my faith to increase without crucifixion. I want to Grok God.  Holy Spirit come. I guess I want the orgasm of God. Hedonist God not the Stoic God.The rocketed into the fourth dimension God. NASA God. Being in the flow always.

Instead, I play hide and seek each day. I wake today and wish to know God more fully and do God’s will more fully. I make myself a cup of coffee and want to savour it more. I was to speak later this morning with wisdom. I want to channel the answers that people need. I want. I want. I want.  What does God want?

Like the Ladies who listen, I listen.  Meditation.  Listening to God.  

I want my back to be better and Gilberts heart to be better and Covid 19 to be cured. I want a manned space and sea, Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes galore, a space colony on the Moon, Mars and Europa. I want to meet with aliens from another galaxy and really be rocketed into the fourth dimension. I want to know puppy love. I want that nativity of childhood which became jaded with wear and tear to return with faith and maturity. I want. I want. I want.  What does God want?

For there in is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith.  Romans 1:17

Faith.  Faith to faith.  Every day, every moment I trust in God.  Jesus said that God cared for a sparrow, would he not care for me? I awake and know God.  God is omniscient. God is omnipotent. God is omnipotential.  God is all.  God is now. God is expanding time inwardly outwardly transcendentally . God is all.  Life is alive. This expericience is palpable, breathing ,tasting, creative not the reductionist dead thing my mind makes with small ideas.  God is transcendent.  God is history. God is myth. God is fact and fiction. God is perception.  God is John Malkovich.  God is Keith Richards. God is Omar Shariff. God is Peter O Toole. God is the Pink Panther.  God is Disney. God is radiant. God is the most beautiful sunset, sunrise and symphony. God is the new born baby.  God is Gilbert. God is.  

Be Still and Know that I am God.  Be still and know that I am. Be still and know that I. Be still and know that. Be still and know. Be still and. Be still. Be.

Round and round and round.

Hide and seek with God.  I see you. I see me.  I see you. I see me. Thou art great. I am small. I am great. Thou art small. Humility and pride. The dance.  

It’s all about faith. Trust. Love.  God is the writer and director.  Do I trust the Script. Or do I improvise and change the words and make myself the centre of attention or do I accept in this scene I’m the potted plant. All the world is a stage.  I’m the kazoo in the symphony. I’m waiting now on the bench for my time to play in the game. I’m resting. I ‘m watching. I’m reflecting. 

Faith. When I get on my motorcycle I have to have great faith.  

When I sail alone at sea I must have great faith.

When I go to sleep at night I must have great faith.  

Faith.  

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Psalm 40:10

Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.  Thank you Mother Mary. Thank you Angel Michael. Thank you Mom and Dad. Grandmoms and grandads, Brother Ron. All my teachers and mentors. My family and friends. All my neighbours. Thank you all. Thank you .  When two or more are gathered together , there too, am I .  Thank you all the lovers I”ve known, the wives, and girlfriends and those I trusted in intimacy.  Thank you for the joys of youth and middle age and old age.  Thank you God for all.  Thank you most for this day and life, l’chaim!

Yagoda Satsanga Society of India, Ranchi Ashram

Laura and I flew into Ranchi, caught a taxi to the Radisson Bleu Hotel. We checked in just long enough to freshen up and leave our bags. Then we were downstairs catching a taxi to the Ashram.  I’d read visiting hours were 9 am  430 pm. When we arrived the sign said visiting hours were only to 12:30 on Sunday.  Laura informed me it was Sunday. The office was closed but the grounds were open.

We walked about the lovely gardens. It was peaceful and calm. There was lovely fragrance of flowers in the air.  We walked about the paths seeing what we presumed were disciples meditating here and there.

The bird song was lovely but there was a loudspeaker from across the street competing with the car horns sounding outside the compound.  I recognized the Evangelical songs and think a Sunday picnic was taking place.  Normally it’s the Muslim call to prayers that use amplified sound like political rallies. It was such an intrusion in the peace and tranquility of this meditation retreat area. A bit like duelling religions.  

I was amused meditating in the circular shrine at my thoughts. Meditation is said to be listening with God while prayer is talking with God. In meditation I just bring the thoughts back to the breathing or the mantra.I remembered so many mantra’s from Yogananda, coupled them with the Lord’s Prayer and 12 step prayers till my Monkey mind settled and I felt as well as heard the quiet despite the external loud speaker, bird song and car horns. Laura sat in contemplation as well. We’d both removed our shoes.  

After a while of silence we got up and walked over to the main building, what might be called a chapel. There a lovely lady told me I had to sit on the men’s side but that Laura could stay on this Lady’s side.

So there I was thinking of the Serenity prayer and focusing at first with annoyance on the church loudspeaker and motorcycle horns. All I needed to do was go deeper. I did and the outside world backed off.  Then I sat on the women’s side unaware of separation here.  I figured that reflected my non binary tendency.  Again I meditated for a while. Then some man began speaking loudly outside the chapel calling out commands of some sort. Again I was annoyed and lost the serenity.  Again I went deeper for a while.  Kundalini yoga. Mindfulness. Come Holy Spirit come. My hodgepodge of practice, all the while figuring God appreciated the effort I’d made to be in a holy place of his. 

I rose and Laura rose and we headed out different exits.  Outside the saffron robed leader who had for a moment come in earlier and checked the harmonium was there.  It was his voice! Who was he to be making all that noise. Obviously just a monk.  Dozens were on the lawn going through the exercises Paramahansa had developed for the school. He was calling out directions while the Evangelical loudspeaker competed and car horns blared. 

Here I’d been affronted by his voice. Laura was where the women were separate doing exercises. She found her way back. We walked quietly out of the compound admiring the flowers.

We caught a Tuk Tuk back to the Radisson Bleu Hotel.  I was hungry and we ate fish and chips in the fine hotel restaurant. Laura just had the chips, loving them here.  I was exhausted . We both went to bed early.

I caught a taxi to the Ashram this morning.  It was quiet and serene. I meditated in the garden where Yoganada had held satsangs and taught children.  I walked about some more till the office opened. Then I was allowed to join with others meditating in his room. A very quiet tranquil experience.  Meditation with others is a bit like the harmony of song, yet in this case it’s a harmony of silence. 

After a while of peace and enjoying the tranquility of mind, happy, I got up and bought some books and gifts from the shop. A postage stamp had been made by India in 1977 to commemorateYoganada’s contribution to India and mankind.There were pictures on the wall of the 200 meditation retreats.  I was happy to have come. Outside I caught another Tuk Tuk.  

 Laura was glad I was back and glad we could go early to the airport.  We checked out and now we’re here waiting for our flight back to Delhi, our bag checked through to Kochi in Kerala. We arrive there tonight at 9.  She’s had noodles and I’ve had chicken biryanis.  I’m drinking delicious capucinno.  It’s peaceful.

India - leaving Delhi

We’ve been in India for a week now. We’ve stayed at the Pullman Aerocity and done two tours. One was to the Taj Muhal and the Agra Fort, then the next was a tour of Delhi with the highlight for me being the Iron Pillar, lunch at Laseez Affairs, the Delhi well, and finally the rickshaw ride through Old Delhi Bazaar.
 I’ve spent the last five days at a most remarkable International Society of Addiction Medicine conference with the greatest speakers from around the world. I learned so much and was present for the celebration of the founder, Dr. Nady el Guebaly.  I had the pleasure of meeting him in youth and hearing his wisdom. Everything he told me then was true though it would take years to fully appreciate the genius of his early insights.  I look back now and have had the benefit of two mentors who received and well deserved, the Order of Canada, Dr. Nady el Guebaly in Psychiatry and Dr. Jack Hildes in Community Medicine.
In the late 1980’s, I was in Bombay for a couple of months, rewarding myself with a trip there after I’d completed my psychiatry residency.I’d begun a dual speciality in Community Medicine and Psychiatry and only completed 2 years of Community Medicine and Public Health. The irony is I did a year of Surgical residency before doing family practice, rural medicine and returning to specialize in Psychiatry. My life path wasn’t a straight line.  Being here after 30 plus years of life and medicalpractice I’ve found myself reflecting on this particularjourney I’ve taken.
Were I to do it again I’d be more respectful of my parents whose love and wisdom have only become known with time and comparison. When we are young we think others are experiencing what we are and now I know the depth of my mother’s love and concern and the genius , love and discipline of my father. My brother was such a good man, so dutiful, fun and willing to sacrifice so much for the love of family.  I took family for granted too much.  I was so young when I thought I was so old.
I wished I’d been more kind to my former partners. I now know that I thought others should change but nothing like 25 days sailing solo through winter storms in the north Pacific brings home the problem was me and not them. I wish I’d been more loving but mostly more kind, less harsh with my words, less judgemental and more forgiving. They are and were such beautiful people and I was so immature.
I laughed sharing with someone here how proud I was to be an ‘intellectual’ as a young academic.  Apparently I had a very high IQ but while that aided me in getting A’s in almost all my examinations it was in the area of emotional IQ I needed development. India is a motherland.  I grew up in a patriarchal culture. Feminism is in Canada just an abortive strain of patriarchy with tails wanting to be heads, a tom boy mockery. My Buddhist professor friend, Aim, now a mother, loves International Feminism and knows it to be a movement of mothers and women and family and not just angry adolescents imitating men.
The low testosterone in the west reflects the decline of real patriarchy in the same way for playboy adolescent men rather than the mature men my father and brother were. India is a land of family and all the men I speak to include their wives and children and mothers and father’s in their discussion.
In the west, the east was viewed as a spiritual monastic destination. The Buddha with eyes turned inward appealled to the increasing alienation of youth whereas the eyes of the Hindu statues always were open and looking out to family and society.  Trungpa, the great Buddhist leader said the west had trouble with spirituality because of their ‘monkey minds’ only being able to experience ‘spiritual consumerism’.
At a 12 step meeting here I heard again the message that ‘god works through people’. Addiction is alienation and recovery is participation.  Creativity and positivity join us with our friends and family, destruction and negativity separate us. In my work I’m so commonly with young adults experiencing nihilism , young men living in the basements of their parents home addicted to screens, and unable to move out to caring for others. The journey Anna Freud described from Narcissism to Altruism is stymied in our society.
I’m always feeling like I’m a much younger person looking out of the eyes of this older person with thinning hair, wrinkles, back and joint aches.
I see less ageism here. I love the veneration of the elders in the east, the essence of spirituality, the humility and service. I loved watching the brilliant young doctors I met here deferring to old farts like me and being gentle with the aging leaders from their universities and communities.
I love the cows. A taxi driver confirmed that in the cycle of reincarnation that any cow could be a grandparents choosing this as the last step before enlightenment. The Chinese have long said they’d like to be reincarnated as a privileged american pet. Here the cow is venerated as the elder and our tour guide, a Jain, told us that increasingly they are finding new medicines to improve immunology from, of all things, cow piss.  Personally I love the Lassie yoghurt drinks here and the yoghurt itself is the best I’ve ever tasted.
In the Bible in John, it says ‘in the beginning was the word’. String Theory says that the world is an vibrating musical reality. It’s a symphony and I’ve always thought I was the Kazoo.  There’s a need for every instrument and with the greatest of conductors we’ve heard chainsaw and Harley motor sounds incorporated into magical symphonies of sound.  Metal and flute and violin have all coupled with the rhythm section. Here the tabla and sitar sound so beautiful together. I listened to the Sharma’s, a protege boy and girl,  that played for the ISAM gala and was reminded of all the years I listened to Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. Last night we listened to uptown Jazz at our hotel, this girl singing a favourite Nora Jones tune with a great jazz quartet backing her up. I remember too sitting with joy in my heart listenng to Ravi Shankar and his other daughter, the sitar protege.
When I was in Bombay before, I loved that so much music was spiritual. This is such a contrast to modern western music which has a recurring theme of getting drunk or drugged and having strange sex.  I am thankful for classical music channels where I can find the glory of Bach and Handel and the profundity of Mozart.  I remember loving flying into Tel Aviv and hearing Leonard Cohen in the taxi. His Hallelujah song now compete with the brashness of addiction propaganda.  It’s uplifting to me and here there’s the Ballywood love songs reminiscent of the Amercian 50’s big cast musicals and this other deeper more quiet spiritual theme.
I read the edicts of Ashoka at the National Museum of India calling for mutual respect of others, their beliefs and ideas. Mutual respect doesn’t mean we agree but it’s so at contrast to the western university mob thugs like Antifida, the Brownshirts of our day, shouting down any opposing view. I loved Spearker’s Corner in London where anyone could get a soap box. There’s a need for that today. Get these intellectual and spiritual bullies and put them in one place where they can shout and push but lets the rest of us live and let live.
Facebook may yet teach us manners.  Here the manners are overall still in tact. However that day to day, person and person appreciation of space and tolerance of others may explain why there are these huge break outs of demonstrations with everyone joining in. The well behaved unconsciously see this as a chance to let the wild out. I saw that years back in Bombay where a group suddenly was ignited and it was a bit of time before things settled again.  It is also a land of constant festival.
I’m enjoying meditation. I most enjoyed talking about reality and neurotransmitters, dopamine and yoga with Dr. Raju Hajela.  He and his wife were hiking in the mountains and he shared over dinner their wondrous experiences of meditating in old caves where hermits had gone five thousand years ago.  Throughout history there are those who go to the mountain and return. The Bodhi tree is such a symbol too. I enjoyed visiting monasteries in Turkey and Israel and Greece, the old desert father places, feeling the gentleness that permeates the space.
We are now off to Ranchi where the Yagoda Satsanga Sakha Math Ranchi Ashram is. This is where Paramahansa Yogananda first taught meditation and heard his call to come to America.  He felt that Jesus Christ was leading him. St. Augustine taught mantra or affirmation meditation and breathing and mindfulness.
Dr. Hamelin and discussed Dr. Herbert Benson’s research on Mahareshi’s mantra and how the words could be any, Benson choosing ‘one’ for his research on the physiological benefits of meditation.  I associate meditation throughout my university and medical school years with the godliness I knew then and the academic achievement. When I proceeded to study psychoanlytic psychiatry I unfortunately met atheists who told me I couldn’t do both.  Indeed my psychiatrist teacher at the time told me meditayion damaged the mind!
Thankfuly I met better and wiser psychiatrists in later years but at the time I was encouraged By my teachers to see marijuana , alcohol and sex as superior. It wasn’t like I was one to argue but the detour in my life took a while to sort out and cost a lot for myself and those around me. It’s actually considered in ‘tantric yoga’ discussion. To Australians it might be called a spiritual walkabout.
 Thanks to my Christian mentors like Dr. Willi and Dr. Philip And the orthodox jewish psychologist Dr. Sam I moved beyond Sex and drugs and rock and roll to a new path that was in so many ways like my former trajectory.  The spirituality of imperfection comes to mind.
Now here I am ready to pay homage to another great source of the best in my life. I’ve so enjoyed going to the Israel and Rome and Athens and Capadoecia and Istanbul/Constantinople, and St. Patrick’s Ireland and the Coptic churches and monasteries of Ethiopia. I’ve loved the Catholic Cathedrals and Orthodox cathedrals of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
India brings all this spiritual travel to mind and helps me remember we are all just passing through. So be kind.

Waking for Work

I actually enjoy waking most mornings. Now that the sun is back from it’s wanderings or baby earth has caught up with the father in their game of revolution.  I like it best when I’ve gone to bed early enough to get hours of sleep. I like it best when nightmares don’t disturb the peace. This last nights, since Ethiopia, since time with a holy man and a masturbating monkey, hippocampus, rock hewn churches, I’ve dreamed so much of family and adventures in heaven.  I love the places I return to where friends and I are messing with boats and guns and engines.  There are gentler mountains and fairer winds, the water is warmer.  I wake happy from the dreams just a little sad to enter into this world.

I have the alarm on my iPad as the song of the Creed. “I believe in God.” It’s a good way to wake as a scientist in face of increasing numbers who hedonistically respond to the programmed fads of the news.  I am a radical, more than I’ve ever been. More than when I wrote peace in paint on my face and marched in streets lined with police.. Now I proclaim Jesus Chist is Lord and know that speaks to the Historic Jesus, the Cosmic Christ and the simple idea of God within and God will come again.  The Messiah is my attention that wavers always.  Jesus said ‘do not be afraid’. It was a command. I wander off into the evil and wickedness of wanton fear, enjoying the sadomasochism of anxiety.  In the law of attraction I bring upon myself the torture of Kaffka’s Castle and Steven King worlds.  Yet I can focus on the light. I can walk to the light. I pray then.

This morning squirming Gilbert joined me after the song began to play licking my face and wanting his belly rubbed.  I revel in indoor plumbing. I am so grateful for clean water that comes from the central line right into my washroom.  

Then I meditate. This cross legged stance is good for my knee, the one I’ve taken to calling bad knee rather than left knee.  The hot tub and valtaren and tensor bandage are all helping. I know I should have rested for days after I strained the old torn calcified ligaments but I was on vacation so continued hiking and climbing and stepping over rocks to get to churches centuries old where millions had come to pray. I joined the song of spirituality despite the intermittent scream at times of the knee.  There seems always that there is a dissenter these days.  The laughter and joy was more than compensation.  Now I play ‘poor me. Poor knee’.  

Sitting cross legged I meditate. I love Dr. Bernie’s prayer, “Holy Spirit Come’....not as a command but as a call.  I love the Lord’s Prayer and only choke at the forgive them part. All the rest is good but everyone is ‘my relations’ as the aboriginal friends would say. How can I hold onto resentments and anger and fear. Let go of all that is negative so that the positive of god can come in. Breathe evil out, breathe good in.

The dog and cat want their morning wet breakfast.  I usually get that first but today went right to meditation. I look up to see the dog in front of me. The cat is right behind me. They’re not letting me escape before I get them their wet food.  

I do the stretches that Dr. Stan Jung taught me. My back has been so much better since I took the time to do these really simple little exercises that now prevent me from injuring myself.  Doing more yoga and more tai chi and gymnastics all would make for a better life. Doing dance again would be a treat. To be singing and chanting more hours of the day would be righteous. I’ve had these blessings. I would be on the ocean enjoying the motion of the sea or riding a Morgan across a moonlit meadow.  I’ve been so blessed by adventures and love.  Now I love my couch. Couches and tv’s are a joy in themselves after a day of work and concentration.

Now I’ve made coffee with the Ethiopian beans, honey and cream.  I’ve had instant rolled oats and banana. I e had  a hard boiled egg I made on the weekend and kept in the refridgerateor I e had the yoghurt drink. Reading FACEBOOK and mail. No terrifying letters from authorities. No threats.  No bad news. I am so grateful for all the good cheer.  Friends sharing baby and animal pictures and news that just keeps turning out, all mostly at variance with the main stream lies and disinformation, the spin doctor propaganda. There is this source of truth.I hope that more and more will wake to the lies, accept the truth. Canada has become so appalling with the death of freedom of speech, anxiety so on the rise.  The elite are now able to literally get away with murder because no one dares to question.  The lights go out here but come on there.

I don’t know where I belong.  Today I look for ward to getting another coffee on the way to work. I go from coffee to coffee in the morning. I enjoy driving my little car. I enjoy the companionship of my little dog. I will help many. I’ve training, experience and talent so for the few offended by everyone I help the many so increasingly thankful for my assistance , words, deeds and simply ‘showing up’....remaining.  Daily I hear of others who are leaving. No one is replacing them. We can’t get new people to join us because there is no money and no protection.  

I’m looking forward to camping. That’s an amazing thing to be working, knowing that in days I’ll be by a stream surrounded by evergreens , enjoying the song of birds and the smell of barbecue.  

Meanwhile I have to shower and get on my way.  Thank you Jesus. 

Sunny Saturday with Laura, George, Gilbert and Churchill

I love the sun.  I love that I’m sitting outside at a picnic table.  I awoke from a dream where John and Susan from Fort Garry days were playing guitar in the living room. My brother was there and Gilbert and the family dog from childhood.  How much better can it get?
I have a new Sealy Posturpedic mattress.  Laura’s hot menopausal body was beside me.  I didn’t even need the electric heating blanket. Eric fixed the furnace after a few days of dysfunction. The snow is all but gone outside. I’ve lots of propane and had just changed the tank the night before.
Some asshole called at 7 am.  I wake normally at 7 am but it’s Saturday and I had hoped to sleep in till 8 am.  The caller didn’t respond.  “This is Dr. Hay. Yes?”  I didn’t wait. I hung up.  Years of the trauma of being on call. Wee hour calls to deliveries, trauma or people suicidal or even drunk and family members of the above.  Nurses, doctors and northern or folk at sea in desperation seeking help.  And this ass hole calls at 7 am. Might well be a family member or friend just not thinking. Like the telemarketers who more often call when I get home from a long day and want to eat.
With the phone ringing and master moving ,Gilbert began hrrumfffing, wanting up on the bed. My bladder which had not been awake suddenly demanded attention.  Laura had rolled over.  George the Cat was just beyond Gilbert. I think George had already run across my legs. I got up.
I love indoor plumbing but I really wouldn’t mind stepping outside and hosing down the street if it wasn’t a municipal offence. When I had my acreage in the country the dog and I would often happily wander outside to water the trees and look at the stars or watch the sun come up at dawn.  With men as persecuted as Christians in Canada it’s good to reflect on the benefits of external plumbing.   Now in the urban centre of offence and rules and regulations I am truly thankful for indoor plumbing.  Ah.....Relief.
I am back to meditating.  After I feed the cat and dog I sit cross legged focussing on my breath.  I used to do this for days.  Now I’m good for minutes. The dog and cat think my being down in their territory is invitation to play.  It’s never long before one or the other is curled up in my lap expecting a scratch.  Maybe this is what Nirvana or Samedhi is supposed to be.
I do sit ups.  I’m pear shaped. I’ve used the excuse of accidents to explain my sloth but the fact is I watch crime drama and war thrillers and binge eat.  Without late night tv I’d be evacuated.    But last nights Ghost in a Shell Japanese futuristic movie with Scarlett’ Johanneson just demanded chips and cheese and a peanut butter sandwich. When I’m on top of these things I have carrot sticks and butter less pop corn. Kind of like packaged blood products for a vampire desperate for the real thing.
Laura and I watched the Netflix “Churchill” not realizing it wasn’t the “Darkest Hour” Churchill movie
“Everyone said how great it was, but I didn’t think it was that good,” Laura said.
“It’s all PC nonsense with revisionist American Hollywood and feminist crap.  Churchill wasn’t a nincompoop before D Day.  His wife certainly wasn’t an airhead like Justin’s Sophie.   People yelled at each other back then.  It wasn’t called bullying. Mistakes got everyone killed. Just as much as ‘loose lips’.  I hate this retrospective falsification aimed at tearing down the greats of western civilization.  The same violent barbarians are tearing down the George Washington statues.  “ I eloquently bitched.
“They portrayed him as having PTSD because of the Gallipoli and WWI experience.”  She said.
“It was a wonderful soap opera, and really I loved the acting and the scenery and everything but it would be no different than showing Stalin murdering the millions he killed portraying that great warrior killer sociopath as a kindly old man who wasn’t breast fed enough. It’s great Hollywood tv drama but it’s not true. I’m surprised they didn’t have a Kardashian having an affair with him to the music of Justin Bieber. No wonder young people are ignorant and fatuous with the shit people put in their brains.”
“I just can’t understand why my friends who are really smart liked it.” Laura kept saying and I kept thinking her friends must be mentally retarded Communist whackjobs.  “They said the film showed him drinking all the time and he wasn’t drinking that much.”
Thank God for Internet. We sorted it all out. Before we had a major argument between us we learned that this  Churchill movie, really a parody with all it’s American Arrogance, ( to hear them speak of WWII they won it single handedly and didn’t need the Allies or Russia) was not ‘The Darkest Hour” movie
In Instabull they have magnificent large scale model of the British Turkish encounter and the errors made by Churchill.  It really is a incredible exhibit that shows how sly the Turks were and how duped the English were leading to one of the greatest defeats of all time.  The Ottoman Empire lasted 700 years and was not the ‘sick man’ that it was portrayed as by Europeans who underestimated them to their detriment.
I’d been in Moscow  where their War Museums have real life Tussaud type exhibits with maps and the numbers of Russians who died to throw back Germany. I’d seen just how much they sacrificed, how much Germany lost in men and equipment,  and what Stalin’s strategy  had done to defeat Germany. The Allies contribution was more a mopping up after the carnage the Russian wrecked on Hitler.
The Americans acted more like mercenaries holding out while the British and Europeans fought among themselves so they could get the best financial deals.  Hollywood portrayed the Americans as high minded but Roosevelt and his cabinet acted  like regular low life horse traders rather than caring about saving Jews or democracy.  The American for years were just bankers and extortionists and then when the Japanese attacked them and Germany declared war on them, they got into the Atlantic war. Very slippery characters. Not at all like the greatest people of the world, us Canadians, who won the war single handedly (just ask our Minister of Defence who also apparently won the Boer War, 30 year War and advised Napoleon).
No doubt the Americans more or less won the Pacific war with the help of Britain and the Aussies but their grandiose portrayal of themselves in all their Hollywood propaganda movies has been as far fetched as this comic book Churchill presentation.  Probably this is not a reflection on the American military but more a reflection on the draft dodging drug addicted sex addicted Hollywood producers of the Harvey Weinstein ilk.
Anyone who knows history knows Churchill’s wife wouldn’t be phoning the King and tattling on her husband or that Churchill’s wife would be considering leaving on the night of D Day. Gloria Steinem  and Jane Fonda would be doing that for sure.  But not the Clementines of the world.
Well it wasn’t Darkest Hour. “Thank God for that,” Laura said.  “Now I really want to see Darkest Hour.”
“Me too,” I said.
Now she wants to go renew her Smart Car insurance at the mall. I’m going to finish this up.
I’d actually started a report I planned to finish this weekend , long over due, but it turns out I don’t have the notes I need. Being in different clinics with records dispersed in the clinic computer systems doing medical legal reports is a major challenge. It was so much better for the report writing when I had all the information on my own computer.
The trouble with the keeping of my own notes is that the fat cat lawyers and their beurocratic Greek Chorus have made the statue of limitations for doctors eternal. The College of Physicians and Surgeons is calling back doctors from Heaven to accuse them of touching female patients 500 years ago and insisting that they publicly produce records saying where their hands were during deliveries because anesthetized patients remember themselves being touched by the Obstetrician during the delivery in the genital region and their unborn babies are complaining that a lawyer wasn’t present when the ultrasounds were done which ended up on Facebook without their written permission.
I wouldn’t have taken notes all these years if I knew I had to keep the records for life and multiple reincarnations after that. I’ve got a storage locker full of files and the cost of digitalizing them would be $10,000s and they say there will be help for this when I retire but I can never afford to retire because of the threat of new rules and new threats as beurocrats and lawyers create millions of new regulations by the second  just to keep themselves in business. Meanwhile Trudeau and the government have sold all Canadian grandchildren into slavery with a debt load rising daily by tens of millions just the same as his father did who put the country in debt till Alberta oil saved Quebec ass.
Oh well, it’s a sunny day. I can’t do the work.  God loves me. Instead I get to play. I wanted to get out in a boat but that will have to wait. Motorcycle comes home next week. I rode my electric bicycle strenghthening my injured knee along the horse trails yesterday It was great to see the horses exercising.
God I love this spring air. Sweet scents on the breeze. Gilbert napping beside me, his ball securely under his nose.
Thank you Jesus for this glorious spring day. It’s a great day to be alive.  Hallelujah. Halleljuh!!!!!

Self Realization Fellowship Encinitas California

Maija, my first mother in law, introduced me to Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda in the early 70’s. .  I later came across the book as the only eastern writing of note in the chapel library of University of Winnipeg which had begun as a United Church seminary education facility.
Contacting Self Realization in Encinitas I began their weekly study.  The 70’s was an exciting time in my life. I’d married the most beautiful dancer in the world and bicycled with her across Europe before studying dance for a year in London. I’d return to study arts and sciences before experiencing a calling to  medicine praying in the University of Winnipeg Chapel.  All the while I was teaching dancing evenings at Arthur Murray’s and Fred Astaires.
I attribute my meditation practice in those early years to my having the focus and discipline to complete my medical studies.  I belonged to a small meditation group that met weekly in the home of one of the members of the  symphony. I forget this name sadly. He taught me the Harmonium so I could lead chants when he wasn’t available. I actually ordered my own harmonium from Bombay and later met the harmonium salesman when I visited Bombay.  He remembered that order well. He said, “We never received an order for an harmonium from Canada.”  I remember well one unforgettable day meditating in Winnipeg with that group from sun up to sun down.
Eastern studies and yoga were not like they are today. True the Beatles had studied with Mahareesh Yogi. George Harrison had put out “My Sweet Lord.”  My friend Kirk had left Baiba and I  at the Strawberry Peace and Love Festival to dance with the Boy Guru followers, later becoming a Prem disciple. Baiba and I had gone on to San Francisco to dance in the streets and  ‘wear flowers in our hair." I believe Kirk’s  family was Anglican. Mine was Baptist though I later taught Sunday school for the Fort Garry United Church. I came under the amazing direction of the saintly genius Dr. Carl Ridd.  A former basketball star he’d become a University of Winnipeg Literature and Religious Studies professor.
I liked that Paramahansa Yogananda had been India’s delagate to the World Congress of Religious Liberals in the United States.   This was an Ecumenical Religious Conference. Vivekananda had been at the first in the late 1900’s meeting and influencing Emerson, the father of American philosophy.  He's lent  his Walden Pond home to Thoreau.  of ‘civil disobedience’ fame.  It’s a small world.
I became a Kriya Yoga initiate in Toronto in the 70’s but only years later made my way to Encinitas California years. It was a moving first visit.
I stopped doing Kriya Yoga when I smoked marijuana remembering that I thought this was a faster way to ‘feeling at peace’.  It was also a ‘tantra yoga’ path in my mind as well.  I had become less spiritual and more an ‘intellectual’ then studying philosophy, politics, psychiatry and medicine.
Indeed studying Freudian psychoanalysis at the University of Manitoba in my psychiatry residency I was told by my professor to stop meditating as it ‘was harmful for the mind’.  Smoking dope was not considered such at the time by my teachers.  So I dutifully stopped meditation but began to study the medical and psychiatric evidence in favour of it before considering that particular professor sadly wrong and rather egotistical as well.
It turned out that Herbert Benson, MD had extensively studied the benefits physically and psychologically at Harvard.  The evidence of benefit was overwhelming. I’d fallen out of the discipline and wouldn’t return to meditation myself extensively until I got into recovery a decade later. I had indeed learned the benefits for psychoanalysis more from ongoing psychiatric psychotherapy and from psychotherapist friends Dr. Miller and Dr. Christiensen.    That didn’t interfere with my becoming a wine connoisseur with my Napa Valley friend and definitely an authority on marijuana.
I was studying prayer in recovery at the time and was again cautioned against meditation. So I began researching meditation in the Christian tradition and began meditating with a Benedictine monk. It turned out that the second oldest Christian prayer, the Dessert Father prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ,son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner’ was taught as a meditation first by St. Augustine. It turned out that meditation has a rich history in the mystical and spiritual Christian and Catholic traditions that followed from St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Chross. “Nada" is as simple an affirmative mantra meditation as anyone could wish.
Meanwhile I’d been very thankful to learn the value and depth of prayer by focusing on this more than meditation. Dr. James Houston and Dr. Willie Gutowski are great teachers of prayer.  “Transforming Power of Prayer, Deepening Your Friendship with God” by Dr. James Houston is my all time favourite writing on prayer. In 12 step programs, known for their rough simplicity, meditation is called ‘listening to God’ and prayer is called ‘talking to God’.  They really are not separate.
I loved walking into the Self Realization retreat centre this visit. . There were monks and volunteers there cleaning and caring for the facility. I spoke to a couple and they reminded me of the monks I’d now had the priviledge of meeting around the world in my travels. There is something wondrous and peaceful about these soulful people. I still recall fondly the Greek Orthodox monk in Meteora who gave me a cookie and sat with me for a time.  I’ve prayed and meditated in so many churches, temples and shrines.
Its was from Yogananda’s writings I learned the prayers, “Saints of all religions, I bow to you all, may thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion and may I be able to awaken thy love in all hearts. "
I was blessed to recently hear Dr. James Houston bemoan the intellectual difficulties that Christians get into when they start discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a needle.  I’d been asking him about the division between the Orthodox Christian Communion and the Roman Catholic Communion regarding the origin of the Holy Spirit. The Roman Catholic maintains that it comes from the Father and the Son while the Orthodox maintains it comes from the Father directly.  It’s such elements of human pride that cause divisions in churches and keep churches, and nations and continents apart.  The Sunni and Shiite division is about as silly to the outside as divisions in Judaism or among Buddhists ,some of whom are strict vegetarians while others eat meat but do not kill it themselves. Dr. Houston focussed on the love of God in his writings and teachings, seeing love as central to ‘spiritual christianity’.
I suspect that Dr. Houston would agree though that the trouble with too open a mind is that one’s marbles can fall out. He’s so very kind to me that  sometimes I fear he thinks I’ve lost one or two.
I loved that Paramahansa Yoganada also focused on the heart.  His whole relationship with God was as a love song, like the Song of Songs of the Old Testament or the writings of the Sufi, Rumi.  I was introduced to Tagore, who my poet friend Bernice Lever loves,  by my studies in the 70’s.  I loved hearing his songs sung there when I visited Bombay in the mid 80’s.  I had the same joyous feeling hearing Leonard Cohen’s songs in the taxis of  Tel Aviv.  Today I love Hallelujah but nothing lifts me up so much as the music of Third Day who I was truly blessed to hear in concert in Abbotsford. It was like the other special night listening to Stephen Bell in St. John’s Church Chilliwack.  After travelling around the world visiting sacred sitesand talking with world church leaders I so often find that it’s right at home where the heart is that God may speak the loudest and softest if one is listening.
I loved sitting and drinking in the peaceful easy feelings that linger in the SRF Encinitas temple.  I meditated there once again. Then I  joined up with Laura who’d been waiting in the car with Gilbert so we could both go into the remarkable SRF gift shop.  Gift shops are so much fun. We were so pleased to find the perfect pillows, little elephants for gifts, a favourite Yoganada book of writings, and a  pink shirt for Laura from India.
The International Society of Addiction Medicine is meeting in New Delhi in 2019 and I hope to be going so I can take a side tour and visit the Ranchi Ashram of the Yogoda Satanga Society, Indian affiliate of the Self Realization Fellowship.  I’ve been following the journeys of St. Thomas of the Syriac church who made it as far as Kerala and would like to visit a church there as well.
There is a place where  Hinduism and Christianity meet which to my mind is where Buddhism,Judaism, Janism, Paganism ,Islam, Sufiism and all religions touch in the great Venn Diagram of God’s love. It’s not the superstitious fear but that place of awe and wonder and humility.
I once explained it to my two young friends, one Sik and one  Catholic friends when we were out hunting partridge.  "I believe”, I said, " all roads lead to Rome but as an Anglican I believe that I’ll find an even better mansion than my mother’s baptist mansion while you and all the other non Christians will have mansions in heaven, but just not in the best part. Location. Location. Location.”  The truth be told my favourite heaven is found in Mark Twain’s  Captain Stormfield’s visit to heaven’
I was a vegetarianism for years when I practiced Kriya Yoga. My aboriginal friends and I today would say vegetarianism is an old Indian name for ‘poor hunter’. For many historically and culturally meat was reserved for the wealthy while the poor had to make a virtue of necessity. That said when my friend Ganesh’s wife Anita does her classic Indian vegetarian cooking I could see becoming a vegetarian again.
It was uplifting and moving to be once again at the Encinitas Retreat centre.  I am so thankful.  Yognanda’s books still have a special place at Banyan Books in Vancouver.