Cognitive Therapy

It doesn't take much to change a mood. Cognitive therapy has taught us that what we feel is what we think. I can change what I feel by changing what I think. More importantly I can change what I dwell on.

The taxman sends a letter saying I am in debt. I am in debt because I hired a criminal staff member and a criminal accountant. Somewhere the police stopped arresting criminals and instead solely record crime. Further Canadian beaurocrats can make countless errors but citizens can only correct those errors through high personal costs in time and money and lawyers fees. Wronged citizens, especially tax paying ones, are rarely compensated. Most Canadians now are looking for ways to avoid taxes, such as growing marijuania or getting into government. A University of McGill study showed that positive work declines with increasing punishment. The Bible showed that building the wall of Jerusalem could only occur when builders were protected.

Every Canadian owes $35,500 individually because the Taxman is in debt. Brunei, a tiny country I have never heard of, is one of the only countries in the world that has not put it's citizens into a bad debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

Most of my friends who were highly responsible and conservative with their money had it stolen by criminals in high places who to date have not gone to jail. The evidence, especially in the unravelling of the cover up, that in 9-11, an inside job, Dick Chaney was responsible for killing tax paying citizens.http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml Covert aggression kills just as certainly as overt aggression. The very rich simply have tax shelters, insider information, assassins, private armies and bought off Taxmen. A National Post editorial in Canada freely asked what was the difference between political parties and gangs such as the Hell's Angel and Tong.

To date no Taxmen have been killed by their country here. Soldiers are routinely killed by our country or it's allies in Afghanistan. Now the Bible talks definitely about Taxmen and says that they can be 'saved'. A taxman figures prominently in the gospel. Jesus eats with one showing the depth of his compassion.

Now I could think along these lines and feel badly. Taxmen have children and care for their own just as sociopaths do. Buddhists ask what is 'right livelihood' Can you be a Taxman and be a Christian? Can you be a Taxman and be a Buddhist?

I could fixate on Taxmen and ruin my whole day despite knowing that I'm doing what most Canadians and most countries are doing, that is, playing the game of "I'm less than". This is a game all bullies create. I have and you have not. The fact is I have this beautiful day. I have the air. I have the sunshine. I have life (until the Taxman reads this.)

I can focus my mind on flowers. I can seek peace of mind and know that no matter how hard I work and how good I am a Taxman can come along and try to ruin my day.

Right now my knee hurts as a result of an injury. It's causing me a great deal of pain. I'm getting over a cold or flu and don't have much energy. My friend is dying. I always seem to have a friend dying but then I realized that's only because I have a lot of friends. Again I can focus on whatever side of the equation I want to. I can further have faith that life will get better despite my aging and slow death and daily increasing need for cosmetic surgery and every other medical aid to slow the inevitable, along with others' body organs. Brain first, please.

Or I can 'psych myself up" for my day. I can pray and meditate and exercise to the best of my ability and associate with positive friends and positive activities. Today I'm on the way to the church because I noticed I had got into the bad habit of listening to the fear mongering in the news. Last week I almost committed suicide because Michael Jackson died. Then I realized that I don't even know Michael Jackson. This wasn't like the shooting of John Lennon, either. More a Sylvia Plath - Kurt Coban variation.

I'm more jaded with age. I'm more easily thrown into a loop by a beaurocrats threatening letter.Only beaurocrats these days are still ill mannered and offensive. Normal people are becoming a lot more civilized a lot faster because suicide bombers are a dime a dozen. My neighbour may have a meth lab he could blow it up if I don't tell him his green hair looks okay.

Taxmen talk like they represent the country that is good. They don't even realize that everyone owes taxes because the country was supposed to stop the taxes after the WWII and it didn't. The Taxman is not good but it's a job he does like the guy who breaks legs for the casino. Some people just take these jobs. Prostitution and drug dealing and being in politics and maybe being professionals, like doctors, lawyers and kindergarden teachers. Kindergarden teachers are baby jailors by a different name. I can make my self crazy thinking about these things.

Or I can look at flowers. I can go for a walk. I can play Handel's Water Music. I am the one who chooses what I dwell on. I love the expression that goes , a bird can fly over your head and shit on your head but that doesn't mean you let it make a nest there.

One letter in which a beaurocrat makes an error saying I didn't pay my taxes when I did and I'm thinking about the unfairness, the poor me-ness, the above the law nature of erroneous Taxmen, how Taxmen aren't monitored, how they should have daily drug testing, and how no one with less than a phd should have a Taxman job in any enlightened universe.

Or I can think another beaurocrat made another mistake and it will be corrected and life will go on. This beaurocratic mistake didn't kill like the last one that gave me nightmares. Stepping in the blood that came from a beaurocrats error. No big deal.

It's a sunny day. Your good leg works. You're no longer in bed with the flu. Your other friends are living. Life goes on.

Cognitive therapy says I am what I think. Change your thinking and you'll change your mood.

Ah but if you had my problems. Yes. But.

I find the serenity prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (Taxman incompetence and bullying, sore legs, friends dying, rain earlier this week, work) The courage to change the things I can (my thinking) and the wisdom to know the difference. Helps me shut off the lawyer in my head that makes a case against my having a good day.

Now I'm going to go to church and a meeting and be with positive people seeking love. I may be in physical debt but I don't have to be in spiritual debt. God loves us all individually and equally and unconditionally. God loves the Taxman. Maybe I can try to be like God and love the Taxman and the Taliban and Dick Cheney and Kindergarden teachers.

Taken Movie

Taken, starring Liam Nielsen, with director Pierre Morel, written by Luc Beeson and Robert Mark Kamen is non stop edge of your seat action. It's profound too. In a simple way. The love of a father trumps the money and lust of rich men.

The New Pornography

I bought my June, Scientific American Mind,Volume 2, Number 3, 2009http://www.scientificamerican.com/mind-and-brain with cover loudly advertising "Special Collection on Sex", "Your Sexual Brain" "What Kisses Mean", "Why Men Buy". It might as well have been Cosmopolitan but not surprisingly I felt none of the brown paper bag anxiety I might have if I had the latest Penthouse or for that matter, Cosmopolitan. Not only that I read it at the restaurant table while having pie and ice cream. The waitress didn't bat an eye. So much has to do with packaging. The article on Bonobo Sex and Society was excellent. I really enjoyed learning about the short Orangutangs with napoleon complex and rape tendencies. The Orgasmic Mind was hot. I was particularly interested in the finding that "when a woman reached orgasm, something unexpected happened: much of her brain went silent." Perhaps that's also what motivates male sexual activity, I thought. The whole magazine was in truth really great geek sex bits and I'd strongly recommend it to any one. It did not cause me to have an erection or orgasm however. Perhaps that says alot about the importance for men of mystery in sex. It's better if we don't think too much about it. That said, knowing the diversity of human behaviour there's at least one adolescent man or woman out there sneaking this Scientific American into the family or dorm washroom. Probably best to get a new copy.

Conversation

People communicate all the time. What they don't have much any more is a conversation. A conversation was a specific form of communication in which two or more individuals came together to exchange information. Text messaging is if anything training people in the art of conversation once again. With text messaging one person shares something and another shares in return. In a conversation this 'sharing' was the key. Language served in conversation as a kind of dance. Information, often called "ideas' were given by one to another and vice versa.

Conversations today lack the richness of the past for many reasons. One is that people share so little time together. When they do it is often in parallel, two people watching tv for instance. Conversations commonly occurred when people were alone with each other or engaged in a common task that allowed conversation to contribute to the task. For example, quilting. When people quilt together it's equally feasible to converse. Similiarly working in the fields invited conversation but today so much work such as computer and assembly line endeavours exclude conversation.

Further, today few have common points of reference such as even the weather. Farmers conversations began and ended on the weather allowing an easy opening and shared points of reference. The Bible was another such common source of reference and communication. The diversity of collected information and sources of such access to that information is so great that commonly people might not even know Michael Jackson has died, who he was, what was the principle concern about his death before another "story" has become the 'news'. The speed of events as portrayed by the media makes their very discussion often so shallow.

Despite the fact that we are at war for years now there is little discussion of the war yet once when a country was at war it became as important as the weather as a source of conversation. In contrast there is more likely the inaniety of conversation that revolves around the batting average of a player and the dress size of a star. This fatuousness is for many the extent of conversation as the consumer industries would have us believe that the Coke - Pepsi "debate" is truly of serious import to the world as a whole. What was once just a matter of personal preference is for marketting purposes elevated to the highest realm of consideration.

So conversation has been high jacked by the 'talking head' media and 'experts' and 'propanganists' . Then when conversation might occur and ideas might begin to flow there's 'political correctness' guaranteed to stymie any true creativity of expression. Political correctness is one of many forms of censorship that guarantee that the modern and post modern man and women are unable to speak freely despite the claim to 'freedom of speech'. Totalitarian domination of communication and especially conversation is at an all time high, beyond in many ways what was extant in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, as collectively everyone is required to agree or be unpatriotic.

Whole discussions that once were truly diverse are reduced to binary code and sound bite with one being either pro or against it indicates that paranoia is reigning high. Conversations then become fashion statements rather than the investigations and sharing and compromise and tolerance that once underlay this fundamental exchange of ideas. Today it serves more often as a means of marketting and demonstrating political agreement and isolating and ostracizing the politically incorrect.

Judgement stops conversation. Conversations can only occur when there is safety and today political correctness and various others forms of censorship ensure that there are always those who might 'take offence'. Litigation of any kind can be so punitive that most fear conversation as it might well open them to beaurocratic, legal or political condemnation if they are not aware of whether it's 'in' or 'out' to be concerned about the way Farah Fawcett died as opposed to the way Michael Jackson died.

Clearly no one would dare to discuss the number in jail or the tax free status of churches and synagogues or the racism of the immigrants or the continued mass killing of innoscent people while obesity is a principal problem in the school system.

Increasingly 'nice' conversation, is the only acceptable form of conversation because disagreement is 'disruptive' and 'contrary' ideas are 'oppositional' and totalitarianism and one party views become the norm because if you don't believe as I do it is not a topic of conversation or even debate but rather a time for marketting and conversion.

The level of terror in a community is indeed marked by the kind of conversations or their dearth. The mass hysteria and frank insaniety that prevail today is profoundly evident when people meet directly in any non structured situation. To even talk one on one so many people need alcohol or drugs or a script to overcome the social anxiety that is preeminent in any totalitarian state. Isolation and social phobia are common place. Yet it was not always so. The technology today reflects the 'conversations' that once occurred between individuals without the interface of computer screen or cell phone text message.

Conversations between people in the community meeting one on one may be limitted while ironically discussions of great richness occur throughout the internet. Totalitarianism and the inherrent social fears reign extant between physical neighbours yet one will share almost anything with a distant "pen pal". Perhaps the 'structure' and "forms" being established in the internet are restoring 'frames of reference' and 'process' that died with "multi culturalism' and "globalization' but is again being raised as a 'new' form of relating in 'conversation'.

One day the cyber monks will leave 'cyber space" and take the learning of 'discussion boards' to the coffee shops and street corners and again 'conversation' will aurally replace the 'noise' of modern cities. That's just a thought. I"m not sure I'd have a conversation about it.

Forgiving God

You are here, God

I know you in every atom and molecule of existence

You are everywhere and everything and nothing in between

You are my inbreathing and my outbreathing

You are my very self and all that is outside of me

Yet I would feel you more

I would feel the safety and surety of your love

I would feel confident in your presence

I would feel that I am more protected

I would experience you more in my very being

I would understand your design for me

I would follow you

I would truly know you as you no doubt know me.

And I would forgive you Lord

And I would love you Lord

Bad Sex in Fiction Awards

The Bad Sex in Fiction Awards was developed by Rhonda Koenig and Auberon Waugh "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of reduntant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and discourage it." In 2008 John Updike was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Pain

If I knew the pain would feel like this

Would I have talked of love.

My father never told me the nail

Would feel like this.

I was so unprepared

Hanging in pain, ashamed, in sorrow.

Does it make it less to say I do it for you.

Better that than feel alone.

So stupid to talk of love among lizards

And those so barely human,

They call me God

While I always called myself a child.

Yet now I suppose I am a man

Dying.