Hey, Brent! Hi, Everybody! Posted by John on December 01, 1999 at 00:22:20:
Hey, Brent! Hello Everybody! Talk about being "late to class," here it
is already 10:30 Tuesday night. Sorry, Folks. I've been busy . . . and
it looks like everything is coming out all right. I had a great
Thanksgiving (in the country) and I've gotten more things done than you
could shake a stick at when I've been in town.
Lonesome in the Bay Area? I love ya', bruddah, and I miss ya'. The
Netscape Hitometer that you set up for Classroom Talk is working, and I
can't believe my eyes. All of you may be interested in this. Our first
day on this on-line counter shows that we had 75 hits in Classroom Talk
today. Interesting, huh? Our long-standing front entrance counter on
the Site Map showed six hits over the same period, up over 6,000 now
since the classes here began.
I hope knowing this won't make any of us shy. Hello to you all out
there (if you're back again on Wednesday). Hello-o-o-o!!! I'm tryin'
to make my hollar carry all the way around the worldwide web. And it's
just a little class after all.
Jeff, you might be interested in the possiblities of this Hitometer for
your site, large as it has grown now.
It's at http://hitometer netscape.com
And if any of the three-score of you out there haven't seen how Jeff's
site has grown, rapidly, over the months, you're gonna be surprised.
Where is that URL?
I alway love to see the independent work that is done by students who
come to this class. And Jeff, you have really done your being proud!
Doug, I love ya', man! Thanks for letting me off the hook. And not
only that, you have reflected so accurately on "What is the coach doing
here?" Good eye! I have been "obsessing" over not giving responses to
all of your postings. Obsessing like that comes from my Student/
Believer side, "performance anxiety," being anxious about being approved
of, etc., etc. Jeff, I thought you did an *outstanding* job, a week or
so ago when you analyzed my behavior and spotted examples of my Doormat
and Believer. Right on! Again and again. Ain't that something,
Kiddees? The coach can learn as much around here as you students.
And I tell ya', Doug, it has been a great and *palpable* lifting of
weight off of me, for you to have shared about that the way you did with
me. By helping me to see what was going on with me, I became *free* and
realized I don't have to do that any more.
Ah, but there have been so many great postings by you, that I *wanted*
to respond to (see, there's my ego in it). For instance, that time you
took so much trouble to share that whole other interpretation of those I
Ching hexagrams I got. I think there's some kind of a special bond
that's shared by people around the world who are "into the I Ching." I
discovered my Wilhelm-Baynes (the version you predicted I'd have) in
1967. And the version you shared was full of insights for me at the
time, and I could have talked on and on with you about that . . . . .
but, I didn't find a way to "work it into" the "teaching plan. And,
above all, there was that magnificent extrapolating that you did from
Albert Camus' "The Plague." Do you know he was my boyhood idol, Doug.
I once lived on the Mediterranean coast, not fifty miles west of Oran,
Algeria, just over the border in Morocco. And after I learned
mindfulness in Hawaii, I often wondered if Camus was actually into
mindfulness, or not. I remember that you said you never really
associated existentialism with mindfulness, but then (aha!) you went
ahead with a number of quotations, filled so obviously with "the
language of aware being," that it proved to my complete satisfaction
that my boyhood idol was, in fact, a mindfulness practioner. Can you
imagine the satisfaction that your gesture spelled for me? And not only
that, you proved to me that "The Plague" was intended as an analogy of
the awareness game that we are studying here. The "plague" is life in
"sleep," governed by the ego and the personality. That's one heckuva
piece of scholarly research you did in that little paper, m'boy! And I
never got around to thanking you for it.
Sally, I loved your Memo from God! I kept reading through to the end
expecting that it was going to be a reprint of some magnificent author,
and . . . . lo land behold, the artist was *you*! Bravo! Beautiful!
>Should you despair over a relationship gone bad; Think of the person who has never known what it's like to love and be loved in return.
Yeah. "To be grateful for what we have."
>Should you notice a new gray hair in the mirror; Think of the cancer paitent in chemo who wishes she had hair to examine.
Yeah. You know, Kiddees, I had my first "cancer scare" during the last
few weeks. That's an interesting rite of passage (in the midst of this
whole thing of turning 65, and Social Security and Medicare and all).
The little book on the table beside me at the urologists office said
that with a PSA above 10, there was a 60-80% chance of prostate cancer.
If there ever was a book of horrors for men, it was this one. It has a
picture of a man sticking a needle into his penis with medicine (showing
how you could fix up your love life again, if you had to go through the
chemotherapy, etc.). Wow, that's *bad* medicine! Brrrrrrr. Anyhow,
the long and short of it {heh-heh} was that after only $165 worth of
antibiotics over a week,, waiting a week, getting tested again, and
waiting another week, I finally learned when I saw the doctor that I was
back at a more normal PSA of 4.8 again. Another reprieve for me! Seems
I've had so many kinds of reprieves lately. And, yes. I have much to
be grateful for.
Rememember this story, men, if you ever have to go through this one much
later in your life. What I learned was that I had *nothing to be
anxious about*. As a matter of fact, I did a pretty good job with this
one while it was going on. I'm proud of the way I lived with it. It
seems the lesson for me so often these months has been in being able to
see that the way things seemed to be (troubling), again and again,
aren't the way that things turned out.
Suz, I always love the feeling I get of being up there in the North
Woods with you when I read your postings here. I so admire the
indominability of you, your optimism and "pioneering spirit" in the grip
of the massive force of great Mother Nature, and yet unbending somehow,
and coming through with such cheerful determination. I take courage
from you that we humans can make it on this tough planet. It gives me
strength to know about you.
Michael, it occurred to me after that long response to you the other
week, that the thing I left out that time was to say that if a person
took to heart the spirit of the strategy I laid out there for getting
out of marriage with as little harm as possible, that that *might be*
the one thing in the world that might reinspire some new energies and
possibilities for a renewal of the marriage in what would otherwise seem
a "hopeless situation." Sometimes these marriages can be saved,
Kiddees. Sometimes they reach such a point of tensions where that
becomes a very "long shot." But if even one of the parties decides to
make a change from within, a change in their own contributions to the
situation, from "waging personality war," to disengaging from that and
proceeding as a mindful warrior can choose to proceed, therein may lie
the only possibilities that it can be saved. After all, you really,
really dug each other, once. And the only thing that may be driving you
apart could be the habitual interlocking "hang-up arguments" that your
respective egos and personalities get you into. It takes two to tangle,
yet even one mindful warrior can "disengage," and give peace a chance.
I liked your Zen teacher's comment on this, best of all.
You're really adding another fascinating dimension to our class,
Michael, and I appreciate it very much. I liked your comments in that
thread, Jeff. It sounds like your "mindfulness muscles," little by
little, are getting stronger all the time. And yes, Jabr! Hello to
you, Jabr, if you are out there . . . . among the quiet ones of you out
here in class? Pauline? Hello to you if you are here! We love ya'.
Lydia? How ya' doin'?
One of the things I'm so thankful for is the enormous amount of talent
in this class. You all will go far. You'll go far.
Quarter to twelve. I'd better get to sleep for my own good. Have to
get up early tomorrow. Lots to do. One more doctors appointment
(routine). One more trip for Lucy (my van, named for an aunt I hardly
knew who left me some money to pay for it, in her Last Will years ago)
off to my faithful old mechanic's house (water pump). One more trip to
the supermarket. And then a surprise birthday party for my friend Alan,
at the Tucson Creative Living Center (which has the best wilderness
workshop space in this area). Brent you remember visiting there. Say,
I can give you Alan and Susan's TCCL website URL, if I can find it, if
you'd like to see where I'll be tomorrow evening. — www.tucsonclc.com.
The weather is just gorgeous around here nowadays. Social Security and
my medical care is handled, and I'm set for the rest of my life. Little
by little I'm gettin' everything done. I won't have to stick a needle
in my pecker, after all. The Arizona Wildcats basketball team just beat
Kentucky, and is number four on the charts. Out at the ranch, the
snakes are asleep and the javelinas rule. A mountain lion had left a
gnawed deer leg on the front stoop of the stable last Sunday morning
when I arrived.. (Doesn't it get you when your cat brings some little
critter that it's caught to show you proudly what it can do?) Our class
here is wonderful, as always. And I'm gonna sleep like a log. I've got
*so much* to be grateful for.
I miss you, Brent. Hang in there, brother, out there by the ocean.
This is a time for the best work you've ever done, and solitude (the
flip-side of loneliness) is a favorable state for bringing out the best
in you for that kind of creative work. Put your mindfulness to it. The
rest will all come in its time. And, of course, I'm grateful to you for
this site of ours even being here.
Thank-you, Lord. Thank-you, Buddha. Mahalo-nui, Ku.
Coach
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