It is interesting being in a position to see a continuous sequence of different people in a setting that lends itself to watching their behavior.
It amazes me to see how many people set themselves up for difficulty and conflict over what is essentially nothing.
Here's how it frequently goes.
A person will choose to occupy a location that blocks a pedestrian thoroughfare and then ignore the people around them.
The flow of pedestrian traffic will start to back up and someone will politely ask the blocking person to excuse them, and that person will look at them but then ignore them.
The traffic flow will continue to back up as more and more people have to wait for the oportunity to get around the blocking person.
The blocking person knows that they are interfering with the flow of traffic but chooses to assert themselves and their imagined right to interfere with the traffic flow.
Then someone comes along and points out that the person is obstructing the flow of traffic and request that the person move along, to which the blocking person responds to the advising person by telling them to mind their own business.
The advising person then wisely contacts whoever is in authority for the area being blocked, and the authority comes and tells the blocking person to move, to which the blocking person asserts their imagined right to be where they are. If this is happening on private property the authority will typically try to convince the blocking person to move along. But if the blocking person refuses to move along, the authority will (in Nevada, anyway) eventually Trespass Warn the person and then about five minutes later handcuff the person and turn them over to the police. The police will then generally cite or arrest the person, but either way they are now forced to leave the premisses and never come back under threat of immediate arrest, and are now in an un-winnable situation where they have to pay fines or pay lawyers to prevent them from paying fines.
And this is the best case scenario.
A more likely outcome is that someone that is being blocked will wait until they are right beside the blocking person and then beat them like a bad dog, and then walk away. And someone else will hang around long enough to tell the responding authorities what it was that led up to the beating, but will mysteriously be unable to provide any description of the person who did the beating.
So what exactly does this all have to do with turning the other cheek?
As with the admonishment that 'should your left eye offend you, pluck it out', it is unlikely that it was meant literally.
You should, instead, adopt a behavior pattern on your Heaven Path travels that assumes that when you are struck you will have no other recourse but to turn the other cheek.
In other words, if you behave in a manner that will provoke people to hit you, assume that your only reward will be that you will have to now lead with the other side for the next hit to avoid the significantly greater damage that will come with taking a second hit on the cheek that is already been injured.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Grammer and spelling
It has come to my attention that my decision to use Wordpad to preclude spurious marks when separating paragraphs for those who use Internet Explorer has resulted in some pretty agregious errors in both grammer and spelling in some of my posts (due to lack of grammer- and spell-check.) Whereas, I'm reasonably sure that the correct usage is apparent to those who read the posts with any degree of sincerity, I will nevertheless endeavor to proofread my posts more thoroughly to minimize such error in the future.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Confronting fear
In your hosts other life his occupation requires that he frequently engage in physical confrontation.
Contrary to popular myth, doing this often does not go very far in reducing the fear associated with physical confrontation. That is to say, every time I must draw the line, I experience the same amount of fear that I faced the first time some 3 decades ago.
I know now that fear is valuable in that it keeps you paying attention when you're about to get hurt.
There are some related differences, though.
One difference is that I know from long experience that if it comes down to it I will stand there and go for it.
I remember the first time I was in the situation and didn't really have the option of running away because I was being paid to be there and if I ran away the income would be discontinued.
I was quaking in my proverbial boots and I was concerned that this might be because I was ultimately a coward or worse.
I stood there and went for it, and came out of it OK.
But that didn't seem to stop the quaking on subsequent occasions.
Sometime later it came to my attention that on the occasions that I was required to run to the scene of confrontation, I didn't experience the quaking, and later still I discovered that if my body was still within the window of elevated readiness that follows physical exertion I wouldn't quake.
Eventually it dawned on me that the fearful quaking wasn't directly a result of the fear but was instead a result of the adrenalin dump that accompanies fear, and if your body is ready for the adrenalin it gets used efficiently (wargasm), but if it isn't it results in random uncontrolable nerve discharges (quaking.)
So I found that two steps could be taken to control this aspect of the fear. Step 1 is to bring my body to adrenalin readiness prior to going to work. Any exercise will do this, but morning tai chi sessions seem to be particularly efficacious, and step two, whenever possible I try to reactivate the readiness by running to the action.
Another difference is that I'm also a lot less squeamish about trying to avoid going beyond threat-level confrontation to physical confrontation when I can even if the unenlightened may chalk it up to fear, not because of any fear aspect so much as because I know how tenuous victory can be and even winning is no guarantee that you will not be walking around in pain for a good long time, if not for the rest of your life.
Also, no matter how justified you are in the confrontation, after the wargasm disipates you inevitably think about the other person(s) involved and ask youself if you couldn't have done more to head the situation off.
Also, having long sense lost any desire to harm, I find that my selection of non-harmful techniques are inherently safer to operate with than techniques used to acheive unambiguous victories through damage to the other parties confrontation suite.
But that isn't the only circumstance that fear arrises in.
For the last couple of weeks I've had to stand up in front of strangers and expound on subjects that I'm familiar with but have no desire to discuss under those circumstances.
Having spoken publicly on a few previous occasions I knew that, as with confrontation, I would stand there and go for it, but that didn't mean that I wouldn't experience the fear associated with public speaking.
I did try to pay attention to the fear aspects while they were happening so that I could share my findings with my guests here at the Heaven Path Diner.
One unforseen, or otherwise purposefully forgotten, effect of the fear on the first engagement was that my voice sounded scared when I started talking. That is to say it was rather quavery. No one seemed to notice, so either it wasn't too bad, or the strangers I was talking to didn't recognize what the quality meant, or my audience was very enlightened and concealed their recognition to allow me to save face (and if this is the case, thank you one and all). Fortunately as soon as I found my stride the problem went away.
On the second occasion I was able to take two effective steps. Step 1 was to begin exercising my vocal cords through single pitch humming for about 10 minutes before I started talking (to prepare them for the adrenalin if nothing else), and second, when I started talking I advised everyone that I been on the phone most of the morning so my voice was already about gone. Turns out the second step wasn't necessary because my earlier problem was apparently based on not having prepared myself to talk at the volume that is required for public (adrenalized) speaking, so the adrenalin effect made my voice quavery.
It is useful to confront your fears. They should be your friends, and by confronting them, and adjusting your behavior to minimally accommodate and harmonize with their foibles, you can make them so.
Contrary to popular myth, doing this often does not go very far in reducing the fear associated with physical confrontation. That is to say, every time I must draw the line, I experience the same amount of fear that I faced the first time some 3 decades ago.
I know now that fear is valuable in that it keeps you paying attention when you're about to get hurt.
There are some related differences, though.
One difference is that I know from long experience that if it comes down to it I will stand there and go for it.
I remember the first time I was in the situation and didn't really have the option of running away because I was being paid to be there and if I ran away the income would be discontinued.
I was quaking in my proverbial boots and I was concerned that this might be because I was ultimately a coward or worse.
I stood there and went for it, and came out of it OK.
But that didn't seem to stop the quaking on subsequent occasions.
Sometime later it came to my attention that on the occasions that I was required to run to the scene of confrontation, I didn't experience the quaking, and later still I discovered that if my body was still within the window of elevated readiness that follows physical exertion I wouldn't quake.
Eventually it dawned on me that the fearful quaking wasn't directly a result of the fear but was instead a result of the adrenalin dump that accompanies fear, and if your body is ready for the adrenalin it gets used efficiently (wargasm), but if it isn't it results in random uncontrolable nerve discharges (quaking.)
So I found that two steps could be taken to control this aspect of the fear. Step 1 is to bring my body to adrenalin readiness prior to going to work. Any exercise will do this, but morning tai chi sessions seem to be particularly efficacious, and step two, whenever possible I try to reactivate the readiness by running to the action.
Another difference is that I'm also a lot less squeamish about trying to avoid going beyond threat-level confrontation to physical confrontation when I can even if the unenlightened may chalk it up to fear, not because of any fear aspect so much as because I know how tenuous victory can be and even winning is no guarantee that you will not be walking around in pain for a good long time, if not for the rest of your life.
Also, no matter how justified you are in the confrontation, after the wargasm disipates you inevitably think about the other person(s) involved and ask youself if you couldn't have done more to head the situation off.
Also, having long sense lost any desire to harm, I find that my selection of non-harmful techniques are inherently safer to operate with than techniques used to acheive unambiguous victories through damage to the other parties confrontation suite.
But that isn't the only circumstance that fear arrises in.
For the last couple of weeks I've had to stand up in front of strangers and expound on subjects that I'm familiar with but have no desire to discuss under those circumstances.
Having spoken publicly on a few previous occasions I knew that, as with confrontation, I would stand there and go for it, but that didn't mean that I wouldn't experience the fear associated with public speaking.
I did try to pay attention to the fear aspects while they were happening so that I could share my findings with my guests here at the Heaven Path Diner.
One unforseen, or otherwise purposefully forgotten, effect of the fear on the first engagement was that my voice sounded scared when I started talking. That is to say it was rather quavery. No one seemed to notice, so either it wasn't too bad, or the strangers I was talking to didn't recognize what the quality meant, or my audience was very enlightened and concealed their recognition to allow me to save face (and if this is the case, thank you one and all). Fortunately as soon as I found my stride the problem went away.
On the second occasion I was able to take two effective steps. Step 1 was to begin exercising my vocal cords through single pitch humming for about 10 minutes before I started talking (to prepare them for the adrenalin if nothing else), and second, when I started talking I advised everyone that I been on the phone most of the morning so my voice was already about gone. Turns out the second step wasn't necessary because my earlier problem was apparently based on not having prepared myself to talk at the volume that is required for public (adrenalized) speaking, so the adrenalin effect made my voice quavery.
It is useful to confront your fears. They should be your friends, and by confronting them, and adjusting your behavior to minimally accommodate and harmonize with their foibles, you can make them so.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Tai Chi Chuan
I have previously described Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan as an excellent sub-ascetic practice. That is to say Tai Chi gives alot of bang for ones buck.
However, the benefits accumulate in the oposite way from the more common Greek exercise systems such as calesthenics and weight training.
In the Greek exercise paradigm, a given execise routine will take you to a certain level of impovement at a fast rate, but once that improvement has been achieved the improvement rate goes flat and the routine merely maintains that new level. To go to a higher level of improvement, one must increase the difficulty or duration of the routine.
Tai Chi, because of the different approach to developement used, initially provides improvement at a much flatter rate. It takes several months to learn a practice routine that will ultimately only take up a 15-20 minutes per set, with a total exercise period of about 1/2 hour a day.
Once you have learned the proctice routine and can perform it without interuption, you will have achieved the full benefit of the Greek paradigm for that series of movements. That is to say, you will have gotten the full contractive muscular benefit from it and continued inattentive practice will maintain the level of developement that you acquired from just learning the moves.
Tai Chi is not, however, a greek exercise.
Once you have learned the practice routine, you will begin bringing more and more concentration into the different structural aspects of the exercise and in doing so you will find that you have a very different and much more intimate relationship between your mind and body than you ever imagined possible. In essence, intead of adding weight or duration to improve developement as in the Greek paradigm, you will be adding concentration.
And as you ingrain the interaction of concentration and body movement over a few years you will find that while still doing essentially the same physical exercise that you were doing from the time that you successfully learned the practice routine, you will find that you are accumulating a wide variety of unforeseen benefits at a steeper and steeper rate.
However, the benefits accumulate in the oposite way from the more common Greek exercise systems such as calesthenics and weight training.
In the Greek exercise paradigm, a given execise routine will take you to a certain level of impovement at a fast rate, but once that improvement has been achieved the improvement rate goes flat and the routine merely maintains that new level. To go to a higher level of improvement, one must increase the difficulty or duration of the routine.
Tai Chi, because of the different approach to developement used, initially provides improvement at a much flatter rate. It takes several months to learn a practice routine that will ultimately only take up a 15-20 minutes per set, with a total exercise period of about 1/2 hour a day.
Once you have learned the proctice routine and can perform it without interuption, you will have achieved the full benefit of the Greek paradigm for that series of movements. That is to say, you will have gotten the full contractive muscular benefit from it and continued inattentive practice will maintain the level of developement that you acquired from just learning the moves.
Tai Chi is not, however, a greek exercise.
Once you have learned the practice routine, you will begin bringing more and more concentration into the different structural aspects of the exercise and in doing so you will find that you have a very different and much more intimate relationship between your mind and body than you ever imagined possible. In essence, intead of adding weight or duration to improve developement as in the Greek paradigm, you will be adding concentration.
And as you ingrain the interaction of concentration and body movement over a few years you will find that while still doing essentially the same physical exercise that you were doing from the time that you successfully learned the practice routine, you will find that you are accumulating a wide variety of unforeseen benefits at a steeper and steeper rate.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
VT after a respectful delay
No one wants to die.
But we all will.
And there is an excellent chance that we won't see it coming until it is too late to do anything about it.
That said, I would like to suggest a few thoughts in the form of questions.
The first is "Why don't events like this ever happen in police stations?"
The second is "Why didn't ANY of the victims have a weapon?"
The third and last is "Were Cho's actions a violation of God's Laws?"
But we all will.
And there is an excellent chance that we won't see it coming until it is too late to do anything about it.
That said, I would like to suggest a few thoughts in the form of questions.
The first is "Why don't events like this ever happen in police stations?"
The second is "Why didn't ANY of the victims have a weapon?"
The third and last is "Were Cho's actions a violation of God's Laws?"