Despite the stainless steel walls I erected,
chemical experiences showed me how to flex it
While I'm highly logical
I still feel depressive and psychological
Though I can bend the frame of context in and around my being
dissolve the shame, step past the sin to profound changes worth seeing
I don't.
We all have the technology and funding to make it function
whats the next obstacle, something like a corporate luncheon
where the friendly conversation is formally mapped out to exchange,
all parties can participate regardless of how deranged
The department of publicity expresses some concern while the
information leaks have caused their dirty lies to burn
Internal affairs makes the effort to mend the seams
but the public's prayers for peace have realistically surpassed dreams
Finally the man in charge steps out of his cloaked illusion,
he silences the chatter that leaves only the hopeless conclusions
But suddenly he checks his watch and dashes out of sight,
what it is he searches for is the sunrise at midnight.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Energy soup
"Do you think that's air you're breathing?"
What is air? The 'air' that you are breathing is 79% Nitrogen, 20% Oxygen and 1% other gases. Nitrogen exists at a diatomic element naturally in our atmosphere. Nitrogen, under the right circumstances and given enough time, can form a nucleotide base attached to another life supporting element in the form of a 5-carbon sugar to form the basis of our RNA and DNA. Our DNA is transcribed into RNA, the RNA is translated into specific proteins for specific duties. Those proteins, or polypeptides, are large chains of amino acids. An amino acid is comprised of 4 elements, 1 molecule of nitrogen, two molecules of carbon, 2 molecules of oxygen, and 4 molecules of hydrogen. Amino acids literally carry out all communication that is preformed within our biological system required to keep it living. That's just one of the biological functions of naturally occurring diatomic Nitrogen.
So I ask again...
"Do you think that's air you're breathing?"
What exactly is happening when you 'breath' air? Sure your lungs expand and then contract, the air passes through the trachea and other important parts of your body are involved such as the alveoli, however I believe the most important part of your breath is how it exactly sustains your life.
C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + 2880 kJ·mol-1
That is how oxygen sustains your life. By breaking the strong double bonds of naturally occurring O2 in our atmosphere we produce carbon dioxide, water (another very interesting compound) and 2880 kJ of energy per mole. That 2880 kJ per mole sustains every cell in your body. With that energy your mitochondria in virtually every cell in your body preform ATP synthesis, converting that energy into an energetic molecule which can be used readily in the body. So I ask, "Do you think that's air you're breathing?". You are breathing a rich solution of chemicals, the most important part of which is the fact that you are splitting a highly energetic bond that naturally occurs in the atmosphere to sustain the life in your body. You are breathing energy from all around you.
This brings to my mind an interesting revelation of sorts. We are energetic beings, we are absorbing energy from our atmosphere and using it to sustain our lives. We are also outputting energy, vibrational energy, in the form of sound, heat, and higher vibrational energy forms such as thoughts, emotions, actions, behaviors, habits and attention. This adds a definite sense of responsibility towards your own life, in my opinion. You must realize that you are 'using' this planet and it's resources, not just to run your car and to heat your house but also to constantly run and heat your body! Does your energy output display a sense of gratefulness towards this great energy soup we are an intimate part of? How often to you take the time to realize that you are absorbing and outputting this energy?
This seems like such a logical use of the information that humankind has revealed about the inner workings of our bodies. The understanding that our consciousness is the product of an energetic biological system which has become self-aware. Your state of mind is directly affected by all forms of both energy input and output. For example with input, how fast are you breathing, what kinds of foods do you eat? For example with output, how do you keep your mind, are you on an emotional roller coaster most of the time or are you strongly indifferent to the world around you? For me, this is meditation. When I sit I clear my mind, focus my attention entirely on my breathing and relax every cell in my body. Controlling the input and regulating the output of our energy is our job, our purpose so to say on this planet. We are given these amazing energy machines and most of us use the planets energy to cause hatred, conflict and death. Our chemical composition and complexity never ceases to impress and humble me. Paying more attention to the things that sustain our lives on our beautiful planet and understanding our lives as intimately connected to the world around us is our right, the only right that is indefinitely ours.
What is air? The 'air' that you are breathing is 79% Nitrogen, 20% Oxygen and 1% other gases. Nitrogen exists at a diatomic element naturally in our atmosphere. Nitrogen, under the right circumstances and given enough time, can form a nucleotide base attached to another life supporting element in the form of a 5-carbon sugar to form the basis of our RNA and DNA. Our DNA is transcribed into RNA, the RNA is translated into specific proteins for specific duties. Those proteins, or polypeptides, are large chains of amino acids. An amino acid is comprised of 4 elements, 1 molecule of nitrogen, two molecules of carbon, 2 molecules of oxygen, and 4 molecules of hydrogen. Amino acids literally carry out all communication that is preformed within our biological system required to keep it living. That's just one of the biological functions of naturally occurring diatomic Nitrogen.
So I ask again...
"Do you think that's air you're breathing?"
What exactly is happening when you 'breath' air? Sure your lungs expand and then contract, the air passes through the trachea and other important parts of your body are involved such as the alveoli, however I believe the most important part of your breath is how it exactly sustains your life.
C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + 2880 kJ·mol-1
That is how oxygen sustains your life. By breaking the strong double bonds of naturally occurring O2 in our atmosphere we produce carbon dioxide, water (another very interesting compound) and 2880 kJ of energy per mole. That 2880 kJ per mole sustains every cell in your body. With that energy your mitochondria in virtually every cell in your body preform ATP synthesis, converting that energy into an energetic molecule which can be used readily in the body. So I ask, "Do you think that's air you're breathing?". You are breathing a rich solution of chemicals, the most important part of which is the fact that you are splitting a highly energetic bond that naturally occurs in the atmosphere to sustain the life in your body. You are breathing energy from all around you.
This brings to my mind an interesting revelation of sorts. We are energetic beings, we are absorbing energy from our atmosphere and using it to sustain our lives. We are also outputting energy, vibrational energy, in the form of sound, heat, and higher vibrational energy forms such as thoughts, emotions, actions, behaviors, habits and attention. This adds a definite sense of responsibility towards your own life, in my opinion. You must realize that you are 'using' this planet and it's resources, not just to run your car and to heat your house but also to constantly run and heat your body! Does your energy output display a sense of gratefulness towards this great energy soup we are an intimate part of? How often to you take the time to realize that you are absorbing and outputting this energy?
This seems like such a logical use of the information that humankind has revealed about the inner workings of our bodies. The understanding that our consciousness is the product of an energetic biological system which has become self-aware. Your state of mind is directly affected by all forms of both energy input and output. For example with input, how fast are you breathing, what kinds of foods do you eat? For example with output, how do you keep your mind, are you on an emotional roller coaster most of the time or are you strongly indifferent to the world around you? For me, this is meditation. When I sit I clear my mind, focus my attention entirely on my breathing and relax every cell in my body. Controlling the input and regulating the output of our energy is our job, our purpose so to say on this planet. We are given these amazing energy machines and most of us use the planets energy to cause hatred, conflict and death. Our chemical composition and complexity never ceases to impress and humble me. Paying more attention to the things that sustain our lives on our beautiful planet and understanding our lives as intimately connected to the world around us is our right, the only right that is indefinitely ours.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Suffering
I watched the film Blood Diamonds the other evening and like many films depicting a realistic image of conflict in African nations it stirred a deep need to help people in the world. I then experienced, while trying to fall asleep after the movie, a brief insight. For almost 2 minutes, while softly chanting in my mind Om mani padme hum, my ego slowly slipped away and I began to experience what could be described as the suffering of all beings in it's continuous nature. No longer an affliction of 'myself' or 'others', contemplating the history of suffering as a result of the human condition led me to enter this slip stream of consciousness. A slight sense of oneness arose from this experience, however the feelings I had that evening were not what I would describe as intense, or even deep. They seemed quite ordinary, as if for the first time I have viewed human suffering through the most objective lens yet.
Directly after the experience I began a series of mental conversations that left me asking questions such as, "Everyone is suffering, how do I help?" and "Who should I help?". At that point a quote from an Indian spiritual poet rang in my mind. When asked through all his spiritual experiences in his spiritual life, "What is the heart of the spiritual practice?", he responded, first, that he was quite embarrassed at this but, "Simply being kinder to everyone and everything" was his response.
The continuous nature of human suffering on this planet leaves this to be the only answer. How can you help? Who should you help? Nobody is asking for you to become a saint and change the world in seemingly tangible ways. You can help simply by remembering to be kinder to everyone and everything, including yourself! The sense of importance that comes when I contemplate leaving my life to help people all over the world is revealed as a false sense of self. Somehow pride and desire ravage even the purest of motives. One need not leave their life to help others, nor look to far lands to find suffering beings. The suffering of humanity is and always has been one energy field. Each time you create suffering you add to this collective energy, and every time you help dissolve suffering, mine or your own, you use your mind, actions and speech to purify this energy and bring it to a higher vibrational frequency. Simply living more present, dissolving your own tendencies to create and cause suffering, and taking full responsibility for your own life and actions will help you live at a higher vibrational frequency and help dissolve the suffering of others. Easier said than done.
Directly after the experience I began a series of mental conversations that left me asking questions such as, "Everyone is suffering, how do I help?" and "Who should I help?". At that point a quote from an Indian spiritual poet rang in my mind. When asked through all his spiritual experiences in his spiritual life, "What is the heart of the spiritual practice?", he responded, first, that he was quite embarrassed at this but, "Simply being kinder to everyone and everything" was his response.
The continuous nature of human suffering on this planet leaves this to be the only answer. How can you help? Who should you help? Nobody is asking for you to become a saint and change the world in seemingly tangible ways. You can help simply by remembering to be kinder to everyone and everything, including yourself! The sense of importance that comes when I contemplate leaving my life to help people all over the world is revealed as a false sense of self. Somehow pride and desire ravage even the purest of motives. One need not leave their life to help others, nor look to far lands to find suffering beings. The suffering of humanity is and always has been one energy field. Each time you create suffering you add to this collective energy, and every time you help dissolve suffering, mine or your own, you use your mind, actions and speech to purify this energy and bring it to a higher vibrational frequency. Simply living more present, dissolving your own tendencies to create and cause suffering, and taking full responsibility for your own life and actions will help you live at a higher vibrational frequency and help dissolve the suffering of others. Easier said than done.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Hospice reflection
In New York while attending university this past year I had the opportunity to experience many different things which carried me towards a deeper understanding of mortality. I can picture myself using that sentence repeatedly over the course of my life. Regardless, one of the insights I have yet to even sample is the continuous nature of this sense of importance that can be derived, in most, from experiences that shatter the false ground the ego stands on, and in some, deliberately staged sessions intended to remove the stronghold of the ego on one's being. Being here right now, mentally, emotionally, and logically creates this sense of importance, almost a feeling of divine responsibility for your own life. I have been participating in zen meditation on a regular basis since August of 08. My experience with this rich tradition leaves me with a shallow, yet deepening knowledge of the true benefits that undergoing a spiritual practice with dedication can offer. However my impatience causes me much frustration along this path of contemplation. How exactly can I help other people, I often asked myself. Seeing the true obstacle to helping others as a selfish desire towards self-cherishing that the ego fuels through attachment, I began volunteering for Buffalo Hospice.
In case you are not familiar with what the Hospice program is doing all over the world today, I will give a brief introduction to their services. Hospice specializes in end of life care. They offer an incredible variety of services at very low cost or even for free (utilizing volunteers) which help the patient and their family members cope with the experience of death. Some of the services offered to the patient are special visits from volunteer nurses who specialize in narcotic and non-narcotic pain management, help organizing funerals, writing wills, and providing kind and caring volunteers to keep the patients company when their families are not able to be with them. For the family there are many services such as bereavement counseling programs for adults and children and other free counseling services (which are also available to all Hospice volunteers).
I was volunteering as what I now describe as 'a kind ear' or 'a kind attention'. When volunteering I sat by patients, sometimes verbal, sometime non-verbal, and offered merely a kind ear for those who wished to or could speak, or just a kind and non-judgmental attitude and attention for the patient to derive comfort from when the family was not present. I also made my best effort to, in environments such as nursing homes, comfort the visiting family members by sometimes putting a little extra pressure on the nursing home staff to give more attention to a patient in need.
Through my experience I saw only 3 patients, 2 of whose deaths I was informed of within 4 weeks of visiting them. I found myself respectably indifferent emotionally to their deaths, mainly because I found myself in a constant meditation in their presence which left me compassionately wishing them to pass in peace and attain a fortunate rebirth as opposed to being in conflict with their state of being. I was engaged in daily practice when I was volunteering with Buffalo Hospice, which was, what I see now, as the only way I could have remained so objectively focused on the good that can come from death. Families coming together, people being forced by the earthquake that loosenes the ground their egos stand on to contemplate their own lives and future inevitable deaths, and spiritually the possibility for great change and even final liberation. Such things can really lead to growth I believe. The negative, far more omnipresent, aspect of death somehow escaped me throughout my Hospice experience. I felt some depression when I found out my patients had passed however generally found myself practicing for them and finding some kind of peace knowing I might have really helped them.
The most intriguing part of my experience in Hospice was this complete lack of a negative feeling towards death. Death is something, like most people I think, I have lived in fear of for a large part of my life. The end, the final breath, the fear of pain and unnecessary suffering and most importantly the fear of the unknown, all things which plagued my thinking and left me almost every time in a state of panic. I remember when I was younger I managed to cope with this panic by telling myself, "you'll be ready when death comes", or "By the time you will be dying life will have been enough". This however, is not reality. Most people die at unexpected times in tragic illnesses, accidents or acts of violence. Very few people are "ready when death comes", or believe "life has been enough" at the time of their deaths. Looking back on those words that offered me so much comfort in the past I wonder what they have become now? What is internally in me that copes with such existential problems with such ease? My spiritual practice as left me in a state of comfort towards death, at least without the presence of my own death staring at me (this would probably change my perspective towards the negative aspects of death). Further contemplation is the only way to find this jewel, this solution to true existential fear. Without confidence, true confidence, in the infinite nature of your consciousness existential fears will rule your mind at the moment of death.
Ultimately, what I have taken away from these experiences is a deep respect for the work Hospice does. I believe I am humble enough to say when my time for death comes I will feel very unprepared, anxious and emotionally distraught. My spiritual practice will give me some headway on accepting the inevitability of death however the most human thing to do when confronted with death is to reflect on ones life in a way which brings up so many difficult and beautiful emotions and memories. What Hospice offers the human population all over the world is a comprehensive and compassionate way to deal with the unifying human experience of death which always leaves families saying 1 thing "Donate to Hospice".
In case you are not familiar with what the Hospice program is doing all over the world today, I will give a brief introduction to their services. Hospice specializes in end of life care. They offer an incredible variety of services at very low cost or even for free (utilizing volunteers) which help the patient and their family members cope with the experience of death. Some of the services offered to the patient are special visits from volunteer nurses who specialize in narcotic and non-narcotic pain management, help organizing funerals, writing wills, and providing kind and caring volunteers to keep the patients company when their families are not able to be with them. For the family there are many services such as bereavement counseling programs for adults and children and other free counseling services (which are also available to all Hospice volunteers).
I was volunteering as what I now describe as 'a kind ear' or 'a kind attention'. When volunteering I sat by patients, sometimes verbal, sometime non-verbal, and offered merely a kind ear for those who wished to or could speak, or just a kind and non-judgmental attitude and attention for the patient to derive comfort from when the family was not present. I also made my best effort to, in environments such as nursing homes, comfort the visiting family members by sometimes putting a little extra pressure on the nursing home staff to give more attention to a patient in need.
Through my experience I saw only 3 patients, 2 of whose deaths I was informed of within 4 weeks of visiting them. I found myself respectably indifferent emotionally to their deaths, mainly because I found myself in a constant meditation in their presence which left me compassionately wishing them to pass in peace and attain a fortunate rebirth as opposed to being in conflict with their state of being. I was engaged in daily practice when I was volunteering with Buffalo Hospice, which was, what I see now, as the only way I could have remained so objectively focused on the good that can come from death. Families coming together, people being forced by the earthquake that loosenes the ground their egos stand on to contemplate their own lives and future inevitable deaths, and spiritually the possibility for great change and even final liberation. Such things can really lead to growth I believe. The negative, far more omnipresent, aspect of death somehow escaped me throughout my Hospice experience. I felt some depression when I found out my patients had passed however generally found myself practicing for them and finding some kind of peace knowing I might have really helped them.
The most intriguing part of my experience in Hospice was this complete lack of a negative feeling towards death. Death is something, like most people I think, I have lived in fear of for a large part of my life. The end, the final breath, the fear of pain and unnecessary suffering and most importantly the fear of the unknown, all things which plagued my thinking and left me almost every time in a state of panic. I remember when I was younger I managed to cope with this panic by telling myself, "you'll be ready when death comes", or "By the time you will be dying life will have been enough". This however, is not reality. Most people die at unexpected times in tragic illnesses, accidents or acts of violence. Very few people are "ready when death comes", or believe "life has been enough" at the time of their deaths. Looking back on those words that offered me so much comfort in the past I wonder what they have become now? What is internally in me that copes with such existential problems with such ease? My spiritual practice as left me in a state of comfort towards death, at least without the presence of my own death staring at me (this would probably change my perspective towards the negative aspects of death). Further contemplation is the only way to find this jewel, this solution to true existential fear. Without confidence, true confidence, in the infinite nature of your consciousness existential fears will rule your mind at the moment of death.
Ultimately, what I have taken away from these experiences is a deep respect for the work Hospice does. I believe I am humble enough to say when my time for death comes I will feel very unprepared, anxious and emotionally distraught. My spiritual practice will give me some headway on accepting the inevitability of death however the most human thing to do when confronted with death is to reflect on ones life in a way which brings up so many difficult and beautiful emotions and memories. What Hospice offers the human population all over the world is a comprehensive and compassionate way to deal with the unifying human experience of death which always leaves families saying 1 thing "Donate to Hospice".
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