Lemme Think About It...

"Why do you give your two cents worth when it's only a penny for your thoughts?"

From The Far Side Of The Glass

We have an inborn tendency to establish types in our minds and to divide mankind according to them. [But] however advantageous and revealing such categories may be, no matter whether they spring from purely personal experience or from attempting a scientific establishment of types, at times it is a good and fruitful exercise to take a cross section of experience in another way and discover that each person bears traces of every type within himself and that diverse characters and temperaments can be found as alternating characteristics within a single individual. Hesse Notes

From The Study...a conversation of possibilities

There is no discrete self or ego living like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is—the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from yourself—can be altered or entirely extinguished. Although such experiences of “self-transcendence” are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and a philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are. Sam Harris

From The Road...The Delta Snake Review Series

Form The Road...

A homeless woman, looking about late 60s, was walking through the parking lot with a rolling suitcase.

Like more than a few homeless, it wasn't obvious until she asked a passing woman for spare change. The woman looked sympathetic, and began a long dialogue about the various public agencies that helped the homeless, where there were shelters, about how to rise above the condition (sounded good on paper), and how she hoped that the cash would help. By the end of the talk, the lecturer was erect and one could say distant, the pupil looked as limp as a 7th grader listening to a one hour lecture on the three branches of government.

Keep in mind, I'm not making a judgement as to the giver's motives or psychology. It's all through my eyes, and simply described.

But, there is another way of seeing the incident.

I saw a sincere soul, but one who only had a rudimentary idea of who she was talking to, and a destitute woman who looked she could be somebody's treasured grandmother.

I sized the woman up as a homeless person, who avoids the camps (and the frequent rape of lone women) as her possessions were with her in the worn suitcase, her smell indicated that she slept outside (strong scent of cement and grass), but hadn't dropped into apathy yet (neat appearance and well groomed hair).

I've oversimplified of course, for the sake of narrative flow, but having seen women who lived in camps, it was obvious she was different.

The woman who gave her some cash was probably a good heart, and most are.

I'll fill in some details though, and consider it a deepening of knowledge about the human side of homelessness.

Rattling off a list of agencies and shelters generally does no good for someone who doesn't own a car. Many of the shelters are full to capacity, and aren't always safe for a lone woman to approach without one. I'm sure some shelters would disagree, but it's true.

You need a car to visit the various agencies and shelters to find the ones that can help you. Plus many homeless pretty much know all that info, they exchange that kind of information all the time (including which ones to avoid).

When the woman came over to me, and asked for spare change, I gave what in my pocket. She needed cash, and I assumed she would ask for advice if needed.

I got a smile and thanks instead, and it broke my heart to see such a gentle soul asking for change in a Silicon Valley parking lot full of prosperous people. I still think of her once in a while, and hope there's some love in her life, we homeless always pray for each other.

His name is Al Handa...a man without a home, describing the homeless in his Delta Snake Review Blog...a homeless journal of sorts. Hope you enjoy this new series.

Lessons From The Sane Asylum...

            "In the end we are are all figments of our own imagination.
           We imagine our own realities, and this is mine at
the moment."

An evening walk...

                                                      I step with the grace of smiles
                                                     for I see beauty all around me
                                                           I see the glory of life
                                                       and for that I am happy...

  

What beauty shines in dappled light,
In misty morning air?
What beauty's cloaked in foggy mist,
Waiting to be shone?
The light it changes endlessly,
No view is ever twice,
Sun and rain and mist and fog,
The ever changing light...

Stopped To Ponder...Again

Step by step
Walk by walk
They keep us moving till we stop

Stop to ponder, and ask away
" Where am I now, what is this place"

as life is
times flies and flies
and as we look back
and ponder why
Why do I, have so little to show?
Why do I, have so little life?
As memories are full of "if then"
Lessons, in wisdom
Are yours dearest friend

But you don't see, the treasure you hold
So I stop and know
Its now, not then
That I'm surrounded by wonders, that I'll soak in...

Lemme Think About It...Remembering

My forgetter's getting better.                                But my rememberer is broke To you that may seem funny But, to me, that is no joke. For when I'm 'here' I'm wondering If I really should be 'there' And, when I try to think it through, I haven't got a prayer! Often times I walk into a room, Say "what am I here for?" I wrack my brain, but all in vain A zero, is my score.     At times I put something away Where it is safe, but, Gee! The person it is safest from Is, generally, me! When shopping I may see someone, Say "Hi" and have a chat, Then, when the person walks away I ask myself, "who was that?" Yes, my forgetter's getting better While my rememberer is broke, And it's driving me plumb crazy And that isn't any joke. P.S. Send this to everyone you know . . . because I don't remember who sent it to me!

Stopped To Ponder...

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Case of the nothing's...

Yep, no post today...went to see a man about a horse...
Catch you later...Doc

Lemme Think About It...

You were not born yesterday, unless I am wrong, in which case, welcome to the world, little baby, and congratulations on learning to read so early in life.

Front Porch Psychology Series...

"The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience." Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck.

"A Case Of The Nothing's..."

Some days I just don't want to post anything... I get a little like Jes B Rambling and work on doing nothing for a while. Some times I'm over it in about a day but, there have been occasions where I have been hit with the nothing's and they last a week or two...now it's not fair to the sane asylum residents who just might wonder over this way. I need to let you know that today I just don't give a damn and will do nothing...only fair. So here's the deal, when you see the picture below as the daily post you know I have a bad case of the nothing's...but know I am hoping for you the same...:)Doc

Lemme think about it...

"Why do men and women's clothes button on opposite sides?"
Have you ever imagined a world without hypothetical situations?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy...

The new inmate at the mental hospital announced in a loud voice that he was the famous British naval hero, Lord Nelson. This was particularly interesting, because the institution already had a "Lord Nelson."

The head psychiatrist, after due consideration, decided to put the two men in the same room, feeling that the similarity of their delusions might prompt an adjustment in each that would help in curing them. It was a calculated risk, of course, for the two men might react violently to one another, but they were introduced and then left alone and no disturbance was heard from the room that night.

The next morning, the doctor had a talk with his new patient and was more than pleasantly surprised when he was told:

"Doctor, I've been suffering from a delusion. I know now that I am not Lord Nelson."

"That's wonderful," said the doctor.

"Yes," said the patient, smiling demurely, "I'm Lady Nelson."

A Funny Thing Happend On The Way To Therapy...LIFE

A man who had been in a mental institution for some years finally improved to the point where it was thought he might be released. The psychiatrist that ran the institution decided it was better to proceed with caution, and chose to interview him first.

"Tell me," said the doctor, "if we release you, as we are considering, what do you plan to do with your life?"

The inmate said, "It would be wonderful to get back to real life, and if I do, I will certainly refrain from making my former mistake. I was a nuclear physicist, you see, and it was the stress of my work in weapons research that helped to put me here. If I am released, I shall limit myself to work in pure theory, where I believe the situation will be less difficult and stressful."

"Wonderful," said the psychiatrist.

"Or else," continued the patient, "I might teach. There is something to be said for dedicating your life to expanding the knowledge of young people."

"Definitely," said the psychiatrist.

"Then again, I might write. There is always a need for books on science, or I may even write a novel based on my experiences in the psychiatric institution."

"Another interesting possibility," agreed the doctor.

"And finally, if none of these things appeals to me, I can always continue to be a teakettle."

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Therapy

"The reason a lot of those bad things happened to you, is because you are a dumbass...
I've always wanted to say that to a patient.
Thank you, this session is on me.
I feel much better now..."

The Art Of Living...Mystery

Even as the horizon of knowledge expands outward from our planet,
It is accompanied by the inexorable horizon of Mystery,
Which expands even faster and farther than knowledge,
Always, leading man's consciousness
To new dimensions...

Mystery remaineth far beyond our earthly finitude.

The Art of Living...Abstraction

What's in an egg?
A song is there, in chemical notation,
invisibly packed into the genes:
Also detailed instructions for nest building,
a menu or two perhaps,
and a map of the stars...
All in the one cell that multiplies into many,
all the disposal
of the little feathered passenger,
so once hatched and fledged,
It will have more than a wishbone
To launch it's life...

The Art of Living...

Enigmas, Paradoxes
Seemingly unresolveable:
Yet somehow, if one relaxes one's heart
and opens one's mind,
and wonders the right wonders,
they become resolvable.
Take Saint George and his dragon.
If earth is a good world, one asks oneself,
Why the dragon?
Because he was needed.
Can you, in fact, imagine
any way George could have made it to sainthood
without him?

According to the Golden Legend, the narrative episode of Saint George and the Dragon took place somewhere he called "Silene", in Libya; the Golden Legend is the first to place this story in Libya as a sufficiently exotic locale, where a dragon might be found. In the tenth-century Georgian narrative, the place is the fictional city of Lasia. 

The Art of Living...The Self

For one begins as a fertile egg.
The seed soul, stirring, seeking.
Becoming a pupil in the Soul School of Life.
Growing in consciousness, in awareness,
using the tools of finitude.
The self in space and time, the while developing spirituality of life.
Through life, through death,
which evolved only later in evolution because it had
survival value for the multicelled organism...
Death that we cannot live without!?

Don't forget to sense beauty, express gratitude and experience forgiveness...SEE

Lesson From The Sane Asylum...Transcendence

Have you ever wondered?
Why each year you live seems faster than the year before?
There's a law at work here.
Called, Transcendence.
Influences time and space and consciousness of self,
for each year lived has to be a smaller portion of ones experience to date.
To the year old baby an hour is a lifetime.
To the ten year old a tenth as much.
To the centenarian but one percent of his experience.
While people he knows appear, bloom and die.
Like flowers in a garden.

Stopped To Ponder

"For the seeker, this sunrise is a metaphor, to have patience with each stage before it evolves into the next.  The sun rose in its own time.  It may be slow, but it always happens."
~Kenny Werner from "Effortless Mastery"

Observations From The Far Side Of The Glass...

A 2013 IDC report predicts that by 2017, there will be 3.5 billion people connected to the Internet, close to two-thirds of whom will use mobile devices. And those gadgets will produce around 40 trillion gigabytes of data, providing a huge opportunity to ask and answer a lot of pressing questions about how people live. OZY

Front Porch Psychology

The “primary consciousness,” the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the present, and perceives nothing more than what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, looks at that part of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., “everyone will die”) that the future assumes a high degree of reality — so high that the present loses its value...Watts.