Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Positive Thinking

While I tend to try to maintain a positive attitude, positive thinking is a religion to some. Similar to faith healers, they believe that the universe manifests something out of nothing, rewarding them for their positive attitude.

Is it greedy to ask Universe to manifest and you take what it delivers? You asked for it, right? it must be yours! A similar idea to "Fortune favors the prepared mind." You must imagine possibilites and see them before you take advantage of them. Similar but different because it is rational.

Here is the difference: If you find a wallet with a wad of cash in it, the reasonable person will weigh the amount of cash versus the good feeling they will get by returning it to the owner. I'd bet the positive thinker could delude themself into thinking the universe manifested that cash for them. Maybe?  This may be a weak example, but you get the idea.

Is positive thinking just another tool to give moral flexability to those who are otherwise good people?

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Roller Coaster

The ride to the top of the roller coaster gives you time to consider the wisdom of the rollar coaster ride.  Perhaps it was a bad decision, that the coaster will break down and you will end up maimed.  Then you remember that thousands of people have ridden the coaster before you and they are safe.

Compare the coaster to the journey toward death.  Similar situaton, you're afraid of the unknown.  But when you realize that billions of others have taken the journey you have, then perhaps you don't feel so special or scared.  They took the ride, and persumably they made it.  All of those lives preceeded you.  Whatever happens next happens to everyone.

Worm food?  That's my guess.  I think I like this idea best because if I can be okay with it, then if anything else does happen, it is pleasant supprise.

Heaven?  Do you go to heaven? What does that mean?  How much baggage do you bring with?  Do you leave your baggage (the emotional drives that make you who you are) here?  If you do leave it, are you still you without it?  Do those with too much baggage go to Hell?  But if you are not you without your baggage, then does it matter who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell?  Wouldn't we all be the same? If you bring your baggage with are you in Heaven Is that what you talk about to other spirits when you get there?

Reincarnation has the same problem.  What good is reincarnating if your next incarnation doesn't remember who it is.  In this case birth and reincarnation mean the same thing...  Unless there is a heaven between incarnations, then reincarnation may be useful as a learning tool.  If this is the case, I'd wager that you are 'there' right now, but you are looking through 'your' eyes and listening with 'your' ears...  Maybe our lives are like movies, and our death the intermission when 'they' change the reals.

Whatever happens, I take some comfort in knowing that others have taken the journey before me and the machinary didn't break down when they took the trip -- or maybe it does from time to time, do we put too much faith in the mechanics of the spiritual universe?

Friday, September 4, 2009

Values

What part of your life, what do you do that you value the most? Second Most? Your values are the relative ranking of these items.  Values are extremely important as they dictate who you are-- because your behaviors, what you do (and to some degree what you don't do) reflects of your values.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Interesting Blog

http://www.stuffchristianculturelikes.com/

Words I'll Miss Part 1

Lucian : Cubbers = Covers
Warren : Mana = Banana
Lucian : A Na = Banana
Warren : IWAAANDAA! IWAANDAA! = would you fetch that for me please.

Can't think of any more just now, but that's why this is part 1.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Free Souvenir from Grandma's Marathon!

Free Souvenir!

I couldn't find the other one after it was removed.  I took my time removing this one-- it was worth it.













Pain free and ready for an 8 mile tempo run.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Poverty... (A debate with myself.)

Being the natural state.  Fine.
This is a consern to when wealth is your 'end'.

I ask that if wealth is your end and you must compete with each other to see how much you can take and control, please don't drag the rest of us with you, because we really don't want to be destroyed.

Please try to understand that there is something wrong with a winner-take-all ethic when you justify beating others with a stick and taking what is theirs by blaming them for not fighting back.

How do you become so morally flexible as to defend this eithc?

I have a theory for that - what do most generals and crazy people have in common?  An irrational believe in a higher power and another plane of existence that they will inhabit after they die, coupled with either an easy forgiveness from that higher power, or the delusion they are doing its work.

When you have to "actually" work for your ethics, you learn to appreciate them more...