(CW: Hurricane Survival)

​Today’s contemplation was hard for me. 

Y’all know I’m from New Orleans, and even though I was attending university in Colorado when Hurricane Katrina crushed my childhood home (not to mention so many others on the Gulf Coast), I was definitely traumatized. I can only imagine what my Southern-dwelling kin went through being at Katrina’s heart. 

The image of a herculean hurricane is burned into my memory. 

Before Katrina, and before my personal “Journey to the West”, I remember the storms of my youth. All the evacuations, all the worry while away, all the prayers for safety and gratitude we all prayed together, huddled in hotel rooms. I remember my mom (of blessed memory) always having, at the ready, “hurricane style” oil lamps, and several of the old-school, black-and-red plastic flashlights, like everybody’s grandparents had. Nash Roberts (also, of blessed memory) was tuned into the television, and under penalty of an ass-whippin’, that’s where New Orleans’ most trusted human resource on hurricane activity would stay. We had prepared plans and reconnoitered routes for running far away. Along with things like axes in the attic, suitcases on standby, and our adamantine resolve to, no matter what happens, keep on keepin’ on, we readied ourselves as best we could. We took care of the things that were in our control, and left to Fate the things that weren’t. 

And it’s from the last few sentences above where today’s take-away lesson (for me) was born. 

We all knew that we could, during any of the myriad evacuations in which me and mine participated, perhaps, not return to things as we’d left them… if we could come back at all. We all knew that no amount of being alive away from home could ever fill the holes left by the washed-away elements of the very things that made those now-drowned places home. We all knew that the day before evacuating that the last bites of our cultural food, food that you can’t just get anywhere else, may have been our last. 

We all knew that hidden deep in our bones, and the bones of our forebears, and from bones so old their stories are forgotten… hidden deep in all those bones was the tale of a surviving people. A people, who over time, have trained an, “... adamantine resolve to, no matter what happens, keep on keepin’ on…”, and who practiced, every year during hurricane season, takin’ care of the business within our control, and not botherin’ with shit outa our control. 

We didn’t know we had this super-power because of some kind of legend or myth, or because of some kind of make-believe origin. No. That’s not how we knew. 

We knew because this power was born from all our collective lived experiences of doing, surviving, and sometimes failing facing the storm. Sometimes preparations worked and were passed on. The ones that didn’t work were quickly forgotten, but not the spirits of their architects. 

Our emotions, dear readers, are like those uncontrollable storms. They’re going to come, and some will miss us and some will drive, full-force, right over us. We cannot stop them from coming. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you some bullshit. It’s as impossible to stop our passions and emotions as it would be to turn off the switch of a hurricane. 

All we can do is prepare. 

When done right, we can keep on keepin’ on. 

When not, much suffering is all that remains. 

Remember, hurricane season is only 6 months long. 

It’s emotion season year round. 

(See y’all tomorrow) 

Seneca said it’s a fact that, “... most of what we dread comes to nothing.” (Moral Letters to Lucilius, no. 13)

Author, Raymond Chandler, wrote in a letter to his publisher that he, “... never looked back, although (he) had many uneasy periods looking forward.” (1950)

Marcus Aurelius wrote that we need to “Clear (our minds) and get a hold of (ourselves) and, as when awakened from sleep and realizing it was only a bad dream upsetting (us), wake up and see that what’s there is just like those dreams.” (Meditations, 6.31)

Much of what upsets us isn’t real… but it sure feels real. And getting upset over that which isn’t real is like continuing to behave as if in a dream when we’re awake. Much of what sets us off is fear-based, and again, not real… yet, our reactions to those stimuli sure are. 

Stop living in nightmare. Awaken! 

(See y’all tomorrow)

Emotions, hormones, and sensations inform our decisions and actions, but we cannot allow them to be the chief maker of decisions. 

It’d be like asking a child to make the daily choices for the family’s dinner. There would be a lot of spaghetti, or cake, or cheese-covered things, and while those things are great on occasion, eating like that every day is not WISE eating. 

Our work is to focus our minds on our inborn Wisdom and act from there. We can check the success of our work by the absence of questions like “What was I thinking?”

(See y’all tomorrow)

Self-control? Whew! Sounds hard. 

Discipline? Ouch! That’s not comfortable. 

Discomfort. *tear* I… I… I need a break, or maybe… a snack!

So… the disciplined life is REALLY hard. It’s supposed to be. To think we’d easily step in to, say, for example, a new, healthier way of eating without difficulty and discomfort, would show a severe lack in Wisdom (I’m reticent to use the word “diet” because people usually infer from that word some sort of short-term, quick fix, and not a lifestyle change of how and what one eats).

Changing how and what we eat, on a root level, is difficult (as a New Orleanian living in Colorado, y’all gotta trust me on this. LOL). Deep, family traditions around certain dishes - complete with happy memories, the addictive nature of caffeine, and the opiate-like chemicals in dairy that make it nigh-impossible for many of us to give up cheese are some of the biological things that make it hard to change how we eat (not to mention the mental and spiritual challenges). So hard, in fact, that it proved to be too difficult to cope with without a safety net… 

The Cheat Day. 

I mean c’mon… about 86% of our eating time is devoted to the gods of kale, chard, and probiotics. Can’t the remaining 14% be ours to enjoy? Damn, healthy-food… why ya gotta be so… fibrous, and green??? 

What, then, do we do about it? We justify the cheat day by bastardizing a Virtue for personal gain: Moderation. See, what happens when we do that isn’t practicing Moderation. We end up, in our weakness, practicing Idiot-moderation*.

​Therefore, if our goal is to change our lives through the spirit of our diets, then we might need to find Moderation in other places, because what we’ll need here is discipline (sadly, not an official Virtue, but the folk-soul of them all). 

I don’t know about y’all, but I know how I feel after my “cheat days”... I feel like shit, and usually after a couple days back on track, I note how great I feel. 

But then, after a couple more days, things start getting difficult again… and what gives us the strength to make it through? The forthcoming opportunity to lay down our burdens, and fill ourselves with delights from days of food-past. 

The Cheat Day. 

If the practice of discipline is part of what fulfills our spirits and heals our bodies, then the Cheat Day is spiritual bypass with physical repercussions. 

(Now, let’s take the above metaphor of one’s diet and shift it to one’s mental discipline and mindfulness practice - take a moment and reflect on that.)

While I might not be overly-judgy when it comes to folx engaging in actual dietary cheat-days, as a religious professional, I can’t be down with a day off from our religions and spiritual disciplines. That’s stone-cold bullshit. 

When we seek excuses to not practice discipline and meditate in stillness, we convince ourselves (and gods forbid, our teachers and reviewers) that other activities are equally as valid for the same outcome and spiritually meaningful in the same way.

If we can’t control ourselves enough to sit still for 5-10 min, how can we expect greater discipline to come from things more complex? 

Sorry, y’all… that’s not just a spiritual cheat-day. It’s turning every day into a cheat-day.

Ultimately, we’re blindly punishing ourselves while delusionally believing we’re giving ourselves a reward.

Pleasure becomes punishment, and our undisciplined passions and emotions win again. 

(See y’all tomorrow)

Stoicism, and most practices that discipline one’s mind and perceptions, helps us manage and process our emotional reactions, as well as mitigate our responses to the triggers that set us off. These skills can be applied to all sorts of things: jobs that we feel trapped in and that raise our stress level, dysfunctional relationships, being an introvert in socially challenging situations… anything, really, can be worked through with power of a disciplined mind and spirit. 

But, what benefits would come from our disciplined minds if they weren’t only used to buffer us from crises? What if we set our minds up for a win, and get ourselves out of those situations instead of suffering them? We can only exist in stress-mode for so long before it becomes too much, and even our disciplined mind cannot help us. 

​We have to care enough about our spirits to not put them in damaging positions. 

No one can or will care about our peace of mind more than we can. 

Defend it as if it were a great treasure… because it is. 

(See y’all tomorrow)

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? 

Trump, Nero, Hitler, Pol Pot, Amin… etc, etc, etc. Powerful people, yeah? 

However, I’m not sure it’s about power’s inherent ability to corrupt. I believe it’s about the individual wielding the power. 

What are the individual’s values, their resolve? How do they reign in their desires? What does the individual do to develop their inner strength? What is their relationship to fairness and justice? How does the individual’s character help or hinder when they’re faced with massive resources, and ridiculous power? How does the individual relate to their passions and emotions? 

Yeah… I don’t think it’s power’s fault, kinda like a hammer or rifle. 

It’s ours; the one wielding the power. 

(See y’all tomorrow)

Don’t have to have an opinion? HA! Tell that to most hard-polytheists, and you’ll get… well, bombarded with OPINIONS. Heck, tell that to ANY religiously observant person and you’ll likely get similarly swamped with stances and positions. 

But why? 

Because the flavor of fully-expressed, righteous opinion tastes WAY better than thoughtful silence…

… and because the axiom of “its more virtuous to be Hospitable than it is to be right” has been forgotten. 

It’s our egos that cause us to attach; to ideas, to people, to opinions… ego causes attachment. 

What would the practice of not having an opinion look like, even if you have one? What shape would taking the relevance away from our deeply-held opinions have?

The power of our opinions isn’t inherent to them, even though our egos lie to us, convincing us that those opinions hold an inherent power. 

Contemplate while the fools pontificate. 

(See y’all tomorrow)