Ever Considered This?

Lemme Think About It...

"There's a really good chance that the thoughts in my head
will eventually exit my mouth."

From Inside The Sane Asylum

Happy Halloween...

Lemme Think About It...really

                                                   "Would mad cow dis-ease be considered the same as moo dis-order?" 

Entry Note To Self..."a lot like people that way"

Denys: [to Karen, whose horse has run away, leaving her at the mercy of an approaching lion] I wouldn't run. If you do, she'll think you're something good to eat. 

Karen Blixen: [staring at lion] Have you - Do you have a gon ? 

Denys: She won't like the smell of you. 

Karen Blixen: Shoot - shoot it. 

Denys: She's had breakfast. 

Karen Blixen: Please shoot her. 

Denys: Well, let's give her a moment. 

Karen Blixen: [as lion comes closer] Oh my god, shoot her ! 

[Lion approaches Karen then wanders off into brush]

Karen Blixen: Just how much closer did you expect to let her come ? 

Denys: A bit. It wanted to see if you'd run. That's how they decide. A lot like people that way. 

Karen Blixen: She almost had me for lunch ! 

Denys: Well, it wasn't her fault, baroness. She's a lion. 

Karen Blixen: Well, it wasn't mine. 

Denys: Doesn't that outfit come with a rifle ? 

Karen Blixen: Ye-ah, uh. 

[looks around]

Karen Blixen: On my saddle. 

Denys: Better keep it with you. Your horse isn't much of a shot. 

Entry Note To Self...journeys

"If you don't change your direction, you may end up where your headed."

Reminds me of something Ole Opossum man told me not long ago... "You know the direction your headed is a lot more important than how fast you get there?" Something along those lines. A little different from  " the journey is more important than the destination," which stands on its own, as just enjoy the journey.  A systemic belief of sorts. Your choice to where you are going and who you want to be are the parents of enjoying beauty along that journey to your destination. It's "all" about the choices we make, don't you think?

I was walking alone the beach the other day looking at the destruction of Sir Matthew. Sad to me...not so much with how Matthew touched and bruised the shore, but of the human garbage that spills from the sea. Was there ever a Humanity to lose? A topic for another time, but it hurts to see something so unnatural.

Speaking of unnatural...each time I walk the beach I look for what "they" call Sea Glass. Just busted bottles of all shapes and colors. When these bottles are broken,  plummeted and scared by the ocean they become an item that gives for many a moment to look down and focus. Focus on something that does not look normal among the sand and char of shells. Something unnatural looking... I noticed that if you are walking along with others, and they are also looking for this fools gold, and one stops and looks down, everyone stops and looks down. That does not mean a damn thing...does it?  Just something I noticed along "that" journey that day. Also noticed this...that every time you find a piece of this Sea Glass... "look harder because there will be other pieces here," will be heard, from someone... It's true, and now I have formed a heuristic belief around that fact. That leads us to some deduction. Is it some physics involved that puts two pieces together or is it the heuristic belief kicks in and you look a little harder for the beauty you are searching? Really doesn't matter...does it? It is a choice of sorts. Playing with both science and spirit, or beliefs if you wish.

It was a beautiful morning. I still recall the cloudless dark blue sky meeting the horizon. Two shrimp boats slowly working the Gulf Stream. The ocean had returned to a more natural rhythm that day. She was more relaxed and wanted to please your senses once more. A few sea birds returning after being hunkered down from a week of strong winds. My mind spoke to them as a kind jester... "I just downloaded an app to identify you by name and your habits and lore. I will get to know you more." Just a way of saying thanks...gratitude for showing up.

As a rule of thumb, (see another heuristic belief), in the warm months I walk downwind first to get the cool breeze walking home and just the reverse in the cool months. That day was in between so I just flipped a coin...damn, another heuristic thought. Down wind as I recall and the journey began.

A few months back, I wrote a post about the beach memorial I experienced on one of my morning walks. The fragile lady released the ashes in the gentle waves and placed a yellow rose as the tide carried him to sea...I was about 500 yards from that very spot when I spotted this yellow rose. Was it just the physics of the ocean that put it there that day? Or maybe I was just looking a little harder...to soothe the spirit of my memory?

Did it not begin with a choice and a belief? Why did I choose this journey this day? Maybe to just experience that fragile soul, still on her journey of sensing beauty, expressing gratitude, and experiencing foreignness. Or is it just Life? What a Journey...don't you agree? If you don't change your direction, you may end up where your going...

At play in the field of Now.."just thoughts"...Doc

Entry Note To Self...a week after Matthew

My daily walk...the beach after a storm yields many surprises. Mostly the surprise of human garbage. Seems the sea spits it out as a reminder to care more deeply for our planet. Cool morning, strong east wind from a new Hurricane spinning in the middle of the Atlantic making high tide a tricky walk. My eyes fixed on the litter of plastic. Bottles, storage bags, pvc pipe, bic lighters, caps, sun glasses, and shoes looking for their mate.

Then among the debris and sea weed you caught my eye...you traveled far. The Amazon Jungle or perhaps the mountains of Costa Rica. Your mother is called Monkey Ladder. A sea pod that can grow three feet long, and as they fall to the jungle floor you emerge and float from the streams, to the rivers, then the ocean caught by the Gulf Stream and pushed ashore by Matthew. Were you really the reason Columbus sailed further west in search of your origin?

Legend has it that you bring good luck to the finder and they will have a blessing. Legend also tells, if the finder gives you to another, the other, will live a blessed and full life...Sea Heart they call you...

You as a possession I will not keep,
for you will bless a life,
that may well touch another so deep...Doc

From Inside The Sane Asylum...give me a break

Every language has its own collection of wise sayings. They offer advice about how to live and also transfer some underlying ideas, principles and values of a given culture / society. These sayings are called "idioms" - or proverbs if they are longer. These combinations of words have (rarely complete sentences) a "figurative meaning" meaning, they basically work with "pictures". Like "birds of a feather flock together."

I don't want to pull any wool over your eyes, but to make a long story short and  please take this with a grain of sand, since it comes from the horses mouth and not hearing this through the grape vine. At times I don't play with a full deck of cards. Off my rocker you could say. There are times I go barking up the wrong tree and at the drop of a hat will beat around the bush. I don't think I have ever cried over spilled milk, but I am guilty of adding insult to injury and I have been known to put all my eggs in one basket...

Enough of this bull shit, I need a break before I taste a dose of my own medicine. I don't want to ever be caught dead...what a visual that is...be back soon...your guess is good as mine. Just experienced a blooming idiom...Doc

From The Road...going home

From The Road...

As I recall it was an early Sunday morning headed for Royal Street. It's hard to tell in New Orleans, where there lives a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

His appearance and demeanor was a nicely judged blend of bird man and lucky man. But who am I to judge. He looked me straight in the eyes and asked, "Where you been"?

"Between a little rock and a hard place would be my best guess", I replied. "Where you been pilgrim", I asked?

"Never been called a pilgrim, but guess that will do", as he grinned, and quickly let me know that where you going is more important than where you been. Wished I had thought of that line to say to him, but he was right, just not that important for me to know where he had been. Not sure I really wanted to know for I fear I may not understand.

It is in these moments you just see a man. A man getting along the best he can. He had no interest in Wall Street, Real Estate or a retirement plan. Not the least bit concerned what was on tv. He did talk about family, friends and even disclosed to me where I could buy some chicken necks on special. What we talked about did not matter. He hummed in between our human verse. Hummed a tune that had no melody or rhyme. Sounded like echoes coming from another room. Echoes of his past I presume...after all not that important  for me to know where he has been.

It was a brief encounter on that corner between Decauter and Douphine Street and our parting statement went something like this:

"Well Pilgrim, where you going", I asked?
"I'm going home next Wednesday", he replied.
"Where is home", I asked ?
Says he, "I'm not altogether sure yet, but that's where I'm headed on Wednesday."

I still hear his humming in my ear and I often wonder where he lays his head. Home I suppose. Always more important to know where your going and not where you have been...

His name is Ronnie...still holds that corner spot between Decauter and Dauphine Street

Home

Just beyond your imagination
There is a place called home
A place where everything is nothing
And nothing is everything

There is a place where peace exist
It's a place visited by few noted men
It's a place where one magnifies the vision of all
It's a place that we call home... Thank you Ronnie, my friend, for the lesson...Doc

The Wayfarer ...

by Stephen Crane

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."

Going to take some time away, enjoy the fall and family...hope you do the same...see you down the road...be well and kind...Doc

From The Far Side Of The Glass...anxiety

One important source is shedding light on anxiety: Google. As reported by economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, searches for anxiety have doubled in the past eight years. Certain terms are typed more often: ‘anxiety at night’ is skyrocketing, while ‘anxiety in the morning’ is also on the rise.

A second factor is opiate withdrawal. Stephens-Davidowitz notes that searches for that term are climbing even as prescription rates are falling, which could be accounted for by the black market and increased heroin addiction.

Interestingly, memory plays an important role in both addiction and anxiety disorder. With addiction, positive reinforcement creates an insatiable urge to revisit the experience. An addict’s aggressive nature partly depends on recalling the feeling of the experience. Soon this spirals into negative reinforcement, where a potential inability to return to that state keeps the user focused not on pleasure, but fear of withdrawal.

Front Porch Psychology...anxiety

Anxiety can be thought of as the workings of a strong healthy brain that’s being a little overprotective. It’s not crazy and it’s not troubled. It’s overprotective. 

From Inside The Sane Asylum...Who Dat Whodunnit

You remember Who Dat post? Well just received this correspondence from Who Dat and wanted to share with you his tale as he saw his behavior this past weekend and my response...

Dear Doc.

Well yes I am a part of the  Who Dat Nation!! and Whodunnit  will try and break this down for ya'll. First the large juice jar is pretty appetizing after a couple of them. And yes my middle name is Hurricane with experience!! 

Moving on, yes I did have the lucky socks on my hands, but it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. But with that being said, I don't remember screaming, must have been the juice jar, yea it was the juice.

This Saturday I will need more than socks on my hands to win, maybe one LARGE GRANDE SOCK to cover my body!!  That's a great idea Whodunnit, yeah that's the ticket!!

With all that being said, thank you Doc for keeping your word and making me my first post!

See you on my next appointment Doc.

Peace, I'm out,

Who Dat Whodunnit

My response...

Dear Who Dat Hurricane Whodunnit...

Always a pleasure making someone a first. I'm not sure about the juice jar elixir evoking primal screams but if that's the way you experience it we will explore that during your next appointment...seems you may have been potty trained much to early, but we will leave that for another discussion. Maybe it was those long trips you took to the out house growing up in Tennessee. I say that from experience. I remember well in the deep woods of Louisiana, hearing similar screams. Usually when the Sears & Robuck catalog was all used up...you may have those experiences blocked in your deep subconscious...a topic for another session. We have made a few changes in our office so when you come for your next appointment the meds will be on the left and the straight jackets on the right. We also need to revisit your day passes and curfew times.

At any rate, just forget the grande sock. You might just try a full body orange spray on. Glow in the dark stuff. The color goes well with the juice jar elixir and hell it makes it easier for us to find you in the dark should you be late for curfew...

Lol...good write Who Dat Hurricane Whodunnit..you are showing great promise...did you really eat those rum pickled eggs?

Kind regards,

Dr Ego Prozac...Underground 

Primate Zoo Keeper

The Sane Asylum

Discovering Ourselves...hold space

What does it mean to “hold space” for someone else?

It means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control until they can fly.

Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through.

Entry Note To Self...in this our life

Nov-el a noun...a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

So you see our lives really are a novel...a fictitious prose of some length, representing character and action with some degree of realism...

In This Our Life,

Every person's life is worthy of a novel. One's life is a true novel, and one they can believe in. Philosopher Jonathan Glover, pondering the notion of what he calls "self creation", argues that self creation tends to make life like a novel, penned by a single author. This process begins early. Children themselves are emerging novelist, assembling their life stories from the numerous emotional incidents in their daily lives. They are the tellers of the stories they are, busy assembling it into coherent life histories.

In our daily lives we are ad hoc novelist. We are both the hero of our own plot and it's creator. So in a very real sense, we are the author of our lives. Do we not sense the drama in people's lives, the plots they live through, the suspense they create, the discovery of unique characteristics and the microcosmic commentary each life offers? And what about their inevitable creative passage through problematic experiences?...a novel indeed...What will you name your novel?...Doc

Discovering Ourselves...Focus

Field of llusion...can you find it?

To use the metaphor inspired by the brilliantly forward-thinking 19th Century American psychologist, William James, our visual attention system works a lot like a spotlight that scans the world around us. This ‘attentional spotlight’ represents the finite region of space that is occupied by our focus of attention at any given moment. What falls inside the spotlight is consciously processed while that which is outside is not. By moving our eyes around a visual scene, we can shine our spotlight on any area of the environment we want to inspect in detail. In fact, in-depth processing of an object, a string of text, or a location can’t be carried out unless it is first brought inside the spotlight of attention. Our conscious awareness operates like a spotlight, bringing the details that matter into sharp relief.

We have a localized spotlight of attention because taking in all the visual information from the environment at once would overwhelm the brain, which is a system with limited resources, much like a computer. The spotlight allows your mind to focus only on what's important while ignoring the irrelevant. This makes reality comprehensible.

Now imagine that this attentional behavior is going on all the time. As the threat bias filters out the positive and lets in only the negative, worry and fear flow through the cognitive system. The result is an overly threat-conscious appraisal of the environment. Essentially, to the anxious, the world literally looks like a much scarier, unhappier place.
.

Lessons From The Sane Asylum...life

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

Louise Erdrich

The Beauty In Humanity

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” 

Henri J.M. Nouwen

The Beauty In Humanity

The beauty of the human soul is not in the pretty face, it’s found within the heart, and hands of those who look, and stay. With all the daily violence going on around the globe, we might feel that the beauty of the heart and hands are lost. But did humanity really get lost? 

Let us revive our hopes for the human condition, and give each other faith in our fellow humans. Sense beauty, express gratitude and xperience forgiveness...Doc

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

Iain S. Thomas

Lemme Think About It...never thought of that

"What if you do die of anxiety, created by something that didn't happen?"

From Inside The Sane Asylum...Where Y'at?

Who Dat Whodunnit...a cool dude. Shady in a cool way...ran into him at JT's. A little bar along A1A. The soft white sand leads through a screen door to the nearest bar stool. A U shaped bar serving several savory characters. They have this large juice jar at one corner. Filled with pickled eggs and other pieces of mass I could not identify. Anyway, it's not the jar I'm trying to get too. It was the face reflecting through pickled rum juice that captured my attention. It was a neighbor and friend of mine from around Pensacola by way of three or four hurricanes. Originally from Tennessee as I recall.

We were at the same hotel when Matthew blew by. Just happened by his door during the Tennessee-Texas A&M game he was streaming, while wearing these orange socks on his hands. Did I mention he was screaming at the top of his voice? Well he was. Grown man...

I don't think the behavior was as much about the game as it was we both chose this part of the world to inhabit based on our scientific research. Safest place along the coast and here we are. Watching a grown man put socks on his hands to cast a winning spell on a football game in a hurricane...Tennessee lost in overtime by the way...I think the voodoo worked for the game...But it's my opinion that when it goes into overtime you have to take the socks off your hand and put them somewhere else. Not sure where. But hey, don't listen to me, I chose this place to live...

Back to JT's...he poked his head around the pickle jug and said, "Who Dat?" The only thing that came to my mind was Whodunnit? So here's the thing...He wanted me to put him in one of my post. I told him I would as soon as I had a good name for him. An altered selfie of sorts. So Who Dat Whodunnit, this ones for you...Where Y'at?...Doc

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

 "The constant message of 'should' we hear from our mind and then we take to the world around us       and it becomes they also 'should'," 

From The Study...a conversation of possibilities

I recently ran across this article from Big Think regarding the premise that we are living in a Matrix and we are in fact a computer simulation...much like in the movie Matrix. Gave me much relief. I knew I had been hacked...what a thought and you know how I like thoughts of possibilities. Think about this possibility...

Do you think we’re actually living in a gigantic computer simulation like the one in The Matrix? If you do, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re in some very famous, very wealthy company. Near the end of a recent New Yorker article about Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley tech-company incubator, this paragraph raised the possibility we’re in need of a red pill:

Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation. 

Stopped To Ponder...Fear

"Fear is its own enemy. It does not want to feel it's self,
because it fears it's own self."

From Inside The Sane Asylum...glancing blow

Glancing Blow...yep, made it through the acquaintance with Sir Matthew...What a ride! I stayed holed up at this hotel about ten miles inland from the barrier island. Weathered it pretty well. Great hotel and staff that seemed to have practiced this routine as a critical emergency. 

Never will forget the first evening of the stay. I ventured to the lobby to see what liquid entertainment might be had. As I entered the lobby there was a mass of people. Picture this...all of the baby boom and greatest generation generation. I thought I had died and God placed me at Live Oak Retirement Center. Made me grin of course.

My first thought..."I selected a very safe bunker. I'm sure they would know the safest." Then I remembered the settlers of Denver. Seems they were headed west to find their fortunes in gold but got to the foot of the Rockies and said something to the effect, " Hell NO!".  They stopped right there. Think that may be the case with these settlers. Headed west with their lady and their walkers to save one last day of toddy time. Got ten miles west, saw the first hotel and said "Hell No!" Stopped right here. What a sight.

Toddy time it was. George and Mertle talking to Bernice and Bernie. Harry was out of it, sitting on the coffee table looking at the fish in the aquarium. His wife Bert standing close by ruminating if she turned on the porch light, or something like that. Then there was this one that came gliding by...Walked right up to me with a wine in hand and said " I own the mortuary in Flagler Beach." Now that was funny as hell! I mean really funny. After I finished bending over from laughter it only seemed reasonable for me to ask the name of his Mortuary. " Creg's with a C". Now that was funny too. "Well Creg, with a C, so nice to meet you", finally breached my lips. "No, my name is Allen and this is my wife named Mary", he spouted. Now that was funny...back home today and all is well with a grin on my face thinking about Allen and his wife Mary...Thanks Allen. Hope all are well...forgot to ask if Allen is with one L or two?...Doc

Lemme Think About It...opinions

"Wolves don't lose sleep, over the opinions of the sheep."

Photographic Museum of Humanity...

The Vanishing of Portugal's Countryside

Behind a fable’s title, Maria Oliveira recounts the vanishing of Portugal’s countryside, where her roots unraveled and still are. 

            © Maria Oliveira, from the series Under the Surveillance of Ancient Animals

This series is not the portrait of the changes nor about the rural exodus. Rather, it’s a diary of her re-encounter with the place where she grew up. “I started this project to think about my relationship with the place where I grew up, to capture what this place means to me after years and how it has changed”, she explains.

“The title comes from a poem that I wrote. They are many wild horses around this place, and as the village is more and more empty they are coming closer to the homes. Nature is slowly conquering the place where people used to live”, she explains.

© Maria Oliveira, from the series Under the Surveillance of Ancient Animals

The silhouette of a cow appears within the fog, both majestic and quiet. Oliveira’s images are imbued with silence that we imagine reigning with these landscapes. The black and white of the photographs contribute to distill the atmosphere of a place frozen in time, uncertain, between life and death. And mystery is at every corner, on the form of a wild footprint, an aging dog looking like a wolf, the rays of the moon on nature.

“There is a mystery that this place arouses in me. When I was living there, people were telling me stories about the past. Even if I don’t think about it, it’s half way between a dream and a memory”, she explains.

© Maria Oliveira, from the series Under the Surveillance of Ancient Animals

It also gives a strong sense of uncertainty, as if the past was somehow taking over the present and not leaving much room for the future. The horizon is usually blurry, hidden by the frequent mist covering those mountains. “There is a strong feeling of emptiness that goes inside people living there, which enables them to reach a calm way to approach life. People are very strong in their way to live with only a few things and to accept the thin line between life and death.”

A symbolic photo is that of a person, seen from far away, still, in the middle of a dirt road. “This photo is really representative of what this place means to me. Someone seems stopped in the middle of something. There is nature around, and the person is lost in some ways; it’s just a small point in the middle of the nature.”

See more on Maria’s PHmuseum profile: www.phmuseum.com/mariaoliveira

Stopped to Ponder Series-Sunday morning Soul

"We all have a calling."

They call him the Wayfarer. When asked why he always feeds the pigeons, he  replied..."We all have a calling."

A living soul would seem to be a reflection of our character or those things that describe us...our IsNess.
But let us  assume that some day in the future...we will just call, future day...our souls become fully
emancipated and manifest itself as a way of totally being...

We really do not know if it will possess the character of goodness or the character of no goodness. Of course
we all think goodness, but this might give us pause to ponder the deeds of our character before it becomes a soul.

Wayfarer has a soul void of defenses and desires...the last words he spoke...
"Release all that does not serve you."

From Inside The Sane Asylum...a storm named Matthew.

Yep...Matthew headed this way. Taking my paddle and going way upstream. Will see you guys in a few days...be well...Doc.

I've never really known anyone named Matthew. Met a few, heard about some, but never got to know  their habits of thought. Not that it makes any difference. It just struck me funny that's all. "Struck me funny", now there's an old saying. A lot like the one I remember my dad saying while he and I were doing nothing one day. He looked at me and said "we're sitting here like we have good sense". Still  miss you dad! How did we get off the subject anyway. Back to Matthew. I'm getting ready to come across one named Matthew From The Sea. Just hope you will have a wee little mercy on thee.

A poem by Amar Qamar...

CRASHING waves... SMASHING seas...
Bringing sailors to their knees.
As they struggle to save their lives
Hoping and praying, help arrives.

The stormy seas as dark as coal, 
Preventing the sailors from reaching their goal.
Battered and bruised, but still they fight...
Staring ahead, into the dead of night.
Rocking and rolling as they try to stand...
Hoping against hope, that they soon reach land.

Bleary eyed from lack of sleep.
Down in their cabins, huddled like sheep.
As they're rocking and rolling down beneath
Weary sailors above, resist with gritted teeth.

hours later, as the storm starts to dissipate, 
It leaves a calm tranquil sea in it wake.
The veteran sailors know the battle is over, and they have won...
As they contemplate, other storms yet to come... 

Ole sailors like a bit of focus...
"Its simply when one has an intent on seeing life unfold in the now and evolve to meet the changes of life itself."...Doc

Let Me Tell You A Story...for Halloween

Catherine "Catillon" Repond, known as Touâscha or "The Deformed One" due to her hunchback. She was born August 18, 1663 and lived with her two sisters in the father's family home in Villarvolard.
Poor and uneducated, she remained unmarried at the age of forty.  Her notoriety arose from a series of extraordinary events.
One day, a violent storm battered Mt. Moléson, turning the sky a deep crimson from the blaze of a vast fire. All rivers, the Sarine, Albeuve and Trême were like torrents of flame. The flood soon swept away a thousand trees and twenty chalets, until finally spent against the cliffs of Pré-de-l'Essert. While the people were struggling against the fury of the elements, they suddenly beheld a gleeful Catillon dancing in a whirlwind of flaming clouds around the summit of a volcanic Moléson. She wasn't alone, but escorted by two hideous demons. The three were relentlessly trying to dislodge a gigantic boulder from the side of the mountain. Finally breaking loose, it rumbled through the pastures of Petit-Moléson, crushing the most prized cows, continuing to bound and vault until finally the hand of the Lord stopped it in its tracks forever. The Pierre-à-Catillon is still there to this day, surrounded by pines and recognizable by the figures on its sides: handprints left there by the witch and her infernal companions.

Once Catillon unleashed a tornado, and the accompanying lightning struck the steeple of the church in Avry-devant-Pont. The next morning, the church rooster was found in the parish priest's henhouse! She had supernatural powers!! Once she turned herself into a hare for a day, being chased about Mt. Gibloux by local hunters, but never in real danger of being caught.

Catillon was tried and burned as a witch on September 15, 1731 at Guintzet in Fribourg, the last victim of populist superstition...

Footnote:

Catherine Repond (18 August 1663 in Villarvolard – 15 September 1731 in Freiburg), was an alleged Swiss witch. She was one of the last people to be executed for sorcery in Switzerland prior to Anna Göldi.

In 1730, the bailiff Beat-Nicolas von Montenach, out hunting, injured a fox; the fox got away but, according to Montenach, shouted to him, with a human voice, that he had hurt it. At the same time, Catherine Repond sought refuge at a farm close to Villargiroud away from the bad weather. She was a beggar, reputed for sorcery, well known in the area, where she often performed chores at the farms. She had the same injuries which the fox had had, according to Montenach. Montenach then suspected that the fox had in fact been Repond.

Montenach had her arrested in April 1731 and taken to his castle in Corbières, where she was interrogated by torture to confess that she had flown on a broomstick to the witche's sabbath. She was then taken to Fribourg, where she was sentenced to death for witchcraft and executed by strangulation and burning.

In 1782, Anna Göldi, often called the last witch, was executed, but Göldi's trial was a dubious witch trial, while Repond was openly executed for this accusation.

It’s never been completely clear just why this one particular case navigated the Age of Enlightenment all the way to the stake — whether that was just the breaks, or if there was some larger interest at work that made Repond’s mouth worth closing.
Fribourg, in any event, adopted a 2009 resolution expressing regret for the execution, although it declined to issue a formal exoneration on the grounds that as the state itself was several times discontinuous with the one that put the “witch” to death, such a gesture would be intrinsically meaningless.

From Inside The Sane Asylum...change

Dr Ego Prozac...Underground

That's right, a name change. Now I could start spouting my opinion
 about Personal Development. But I'm not. What actually
happened...I just thought Dr. Ego Prozac's name needed something
 to distinguish it as being different. Hell I don't even know what
Underground symbolizes. In the old days, I went to a record shop
named Underground...but it was actually Underground. Went to an
underground pub once. Or maybe twice.. I remember this great
bookstore in Denver named Underground...or was it Tattered
Covers? Dr Ego Prozac'sTattered Covers.  Something to ponder
for my next change. Back to thebookstore. It was a great bookstore,
but of course that was when we had bookstores. Change...now
ain't that some shits? I hope you saw the post on Two Shits?

The act or instance of making or becoming different...now I gave this some thought. What could one do to

change and experience the act or instance of making or becoming different? Your name. Pure logic...

What else could it be. Just make or become different in an instant. Now there is a whole field of psychology 

devoted to change. They deal with behavior and break down behavior into pieces and one learns each peace at
time...or something like that. You get the picture...right? Requires waiting. It can be looked at from a philosophical level as well.
Its simply when one has an intent on seeing life unfold in the now and evolve to meet the changes of life itself.

So...I think the bigger issue for psychology is "waiting". 

Waiting entails waiting for something. And it is the something that we’re after.
 Or maybe it’s something that we’re trying to avoid. The something could be
something horrible, but waiting for something horrible to happen doesn’t make
waiting any better.The problem, or reality, is that life requires a lot of waiting.
Like a lot, a lot. Couldn't wait...I wanted instant change. So there you have it.

Dr. Ego Prozac...Underground.

Footnote: I just really wanted a reason to spout off on change...Doc

Discovering Ourselves..the most important question of your life.

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives tUrn oUt.

Because happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.

At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.Mark

MansonTHE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF YOUR LIFE

What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life... Mark Manson, Personal Development That Does Not Suck...check him out on Facebook and his website...always a good read with new insights on old outsights...Doc

MNovember 6, 20137 minute readby Mark Manso

From The Study...a conversation about possibilities

The Zen Of Not Giving Two Shits...

“I couldn’t give two shits” is a pretty weird expression—I mean, why anyone would want to give any number of shits toward anything is beyond me.

It’s as if some grand shit-giving presentation is the pinnacle of all meaning.

(Not giving a rats ass is another way of putting it, but I prefer the sheer perplexity of “not giving two shits.”)

People often say that the key to being happy and peaceful in life is to tear off the masks we wear and just be ourselves—in other words, to stop giving two shits about who everyone else wants us to be and just be our authentic selves.

The word “authentic” has apparently now been added to the list of buzzwords and clichés in the personal development world, which means we can no longer use it or run the risk of being forever castigated. Personally, I couldn’t give two shits about this (see what I did there?), since I actually like the word authentic. It’s in the dictionary like all the other words and I happen to feel it illustrates my point quite well.

Maybe I’ve learned to not give two shits about this stuff now, but it’s definitely not always been that way. I spent a large portion of my life giving two shits about everything. In fact, I gave more than two shits. I would go around giving as many shits as I could about every shitting aspect of life.

To put it another way, I was a serial shit giver. And it was very tiring.

I’d give shits about what every person thought of me, where I was going in life, what people thought about where I was going in life, how much money I was earning, how much I’d achieved, big life things, small everyday things and just about everything in my existence.

The weird thing was that, the whole time, I attempted to portray someone who was super laid back and didn’t give two shits about anything. I’m not sure how successful I was at that, but underneath I was desperately bothered about everything.

Shits were secretly given in all areas and directions.

What this created was an almost constant state of inner turmoil, worry, panic and anxiety about whether all this stuff I gave two shits about was actually going to work out. Regardless of what happened, I would keep on making up more stuff to give a shit about and was never able to actually sit back and just be at peace with everything.

Footnote: I wanted to share with you the humor and the talents of Michael Glover. I will present this topic over several series in the next few weeks. Each will stand on their own, but follow his story with a dash of folk psychology mixed in...hope you enjoy it. Above all I hope it made you grin...Doc

Zen and the Art of Not Giving Two shits...Michael Glover. Check out Michael's world on Facebook, pod cast and website...

Discovering Ourselves Series...Now

At Play In The Field Of Now...The Art Of Now

I've given this some thought of recent.  I always stop and read those post that highlight "the Now". Always say yep, thats good, real good...now how the hell does one do that?

We live in the age of so much distraction.  But one of life's greatest paradoxes is that your brightest future hinges on your ability to pay attention to the present. Got that? Pay attention to the present, at least  a reasonable amount of attention should be given to it.

Life unfolds in the present. But so often, we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized, and squandering the precious seconds of our lives as we worry about the future and ruminate about what's past. "We're living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence," says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We're always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

You are not your thoughts you know...

In her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about a friend who, whenever she sees a beautiful place, exclaims in a near panic, "It's so beautiful here! I want to come back here someday!" "It takes all my persuasive powers," writes Gilbert, "to try to convince her that she is already here."