Spiritual Stuff.

Bea Arthur died this morning. She was age 86. Family members reported that she was battling cancer.

One of the true greats, Beatrice Arthur was a strong woman and a phenomenal actress. Earl and I had the opportunity to see her show, “Bea Arthur On Broadway: Between Friends” back in 2002. We waited by the back stage door after the show to see her; she was unable to meet the fans waiting but she was cordial as she passed by, being escorted by friends.  I often thought of her as a ‘handsome’ woman. Her presence reminded me in some ways of my Aunt Jen.

Below is one of my favourite clips from “The Golden Girls”; Bea almost loses it during the scene.

RIP Bea. You will be missed.

“I never finished this book.”

It was a thought that suddenly jumped into my mind as I worked my way around the Jacuzzi, doing a bit of spring cleaning in the master bathroom on a Monday night. Two books always sit on the tiled ledge around the tub. One book I have read over 30 times, the other I was still reading for the first time. It had been at least six weeks since I last picked it up.

The book in question was a gift from my friend Gregory. He thought that I would enjoy the book immensely, and from what I have read thus far, he was absolutely correct. This book is very fascinating to me. The subject fits right into my belief system and the words flow easily as I move from page to page.

I suppose there are a couple of reasons I haven’t sat down or hopped in the tub and read in a while. Life has been hectic. Work has been uneven and very intrusive during the intense on-call weeks. I have been traveling a lot. I’ve been fighting the effects of SAD, even though I swore I don’t suffer from that sort of thing. Perhaps it’s not a full-blown disorder, maybe I just feel a really strong sense of cabin fever or the winter blahs. Whatever it is or was, I feel like I have finally moved beyond it.

The cleanliness of the bathroom, a project that Earl and I embarked on last night, lent itself to a ride in the Jacuzzi tonight. I filled the tub with water that was as hot as I could stand. I lit an incense stick. I turned on the jets, picked up the book and began reading right where I had left off so many weeks ago.

45 minutes later I was still being pushed around by the jets, the scent of the now used incense stick lingered and I was four chapters further along in “Out On A Limb” by Shirley MacLaine.

Several years ago, right after I started this blog, I did a lot of reading, studying and contemplating on the subject of spirituality. I have no interest in organised religion; I see that practise as nothing more than a very large corporation that seeks to make money and control those that go along with their plan, however perverted from it’s original intent it may be. Religion has no place in my existence, whereas I am very compelled to further understand spirituality.

Interestingly, the concept of “hell” is foreign to me. The whole idea of there being such a bad place doesn’t make sense if there is such a thing as an “all-loving God”. I remember as a child asking my mother what “hell” was. She told me that she didn’t really believe in it but if there was such a place that it was probably right here. A formative statement? Quite possibly, but I tend to think of our existence here on Earth as “the hard part”. When we pass on and our spirit leaves the vehicle we call the body is when we truly are home and in an environment of pure love. We do our thing on the Other Side for a long while and then we decide we need to learn some more and we come back and do it all over again under different circumstances.

I think Shirley would concur with my beliefs.

I haven’t felt connected to my spiritual beliefs in a while¹. Once upon a time I felt very connected to the Universe: I meditated twice a day, I practised yoga, I had a sense of who I was and where I was going, I burned incense in my office on a daily basis (incense is very transformative for me). I felt very centered. It’s not that I feel disconnected these days but I don’t feel AS connected as I did say five or six years ago. I still see guideposts along the way that remind me of what I believe and have learned along this path; I meet those that I feel connected to in a way that feels like a millenium of familiarity. I stumble into déjà vu like feelings from time to time. The other night I had a dream quite similar to what I thought was a dream I remembered from a few years ago. I flipped through my dream log, certain that I had written it down but I could not find it. It was then that I realised that I hadn’t had that dream before but had worked the scene into my morning meditation back in 2003. My mind had decided that it was time bring that scene back to the forefront, five and a half years later, so that I would remember that I had experienced many of these feelings before and that I probably would again.

I don’t know if he’s conspiring with Gregory (and his gift of Shirley’s book), but David² has been urging me to start meditating again and perhaps start taking a class in the practise. I’m strongly considering it. Earl and I have talked about the subject at length and he agree that I don’t seem unhappy in any way these days, quite the contrary, but I don’t seem as grounded as I used to be. So the meditation class is something that I’m looking into. As I’m writing this entry I’m listening to the white noise of a thunderstorm from my iTunes. I find the sound to be incredibly relaxing. Perhaps I need the focus, and more importantly the relaxation, of the meditation exercise to get myself back into spiritual shape.

I feel very enriched and immensely lucky to have the life that I have these days. I also have a need to give back to the world in some way, but in order to do that I feel I need to be grounded better in order to make a positive contribution.

Perhaps continuing that book tonight was the first step in getting myself back in shape.

¹ I realise that my spiritual beliefs are a little unique when it comes to this sort of thing and I understand that there are those that don’t believe in the way that I do at all. I honour and respect the beliefs that others have, even if it’s a belief that there is no such thing as a “higher power”, and ask that the comments to this entry not be a debate as to the existence of such. In the process, I thank you for being part of my journey.

² Here is more information on the men I’m talking about in this blog entry.

I found this picture Earl took a little over a week ago when we were visiting my sister and her husband outside of Toronto. They have since headed back to Europe. Last I knew they were relocating to Helsinki. It’s dark there.

This is my nephew sitting on his uncle’s lap and looking elsewhere. Someday I’m going to show him this photo and tell him about all the places he has been and what his first holiday was like.

Now that the holiday season has officially passed and things are getting back to the routine, I can honestly say that Earl and I celebrated the holidays exactly the way we wanted to, and it was all good.

Eartha Kitt, best known as one of the actresses to play “Catwoman” on Batman and Robin passed on yesterday. She was 81 years old. Despite attempts from others, Eartha was the most cat-like woman ever known.

She is perhaps best known to gay club goers from the 80s and 90s for “Where Is My Man”, a song that not-surprisingly would be played on weekends on my old radio station. I wonder how that got there.

RIP, Eartha. Meow.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry, wife of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and the only actor to appear on every version of “Star Trek” in some capacity (Christine Chapel, Lwaxana Troi, ‘the computer’, plus others) passed on last night from cancer.

She was 76.

Two weeks ago she completed her voice work for the upcoming Star Trek movie where she will be the voice of the computer, as she did in almost every incarnation of the franchise.

Personally, I was fan of Majel right from the start, when she played “Number One” on the original pilot of “Star Trek”. The role was dropped from the series, as the networks never thought the audience would be a female second command of starship. Silly networks.

RIP Majel.

I have discovered a way to calm myself down when I get stressed at work. Yes, I am still plugging away at the binaural beats experiment that I mentioned last week but occasionally at work I need an image for me to focus on so that I can re-center myself.

Naked photos of my favorite guys would do wonders but would probably not be appropriate for work.

Instead I have a photograph of a sunset as my desktop background. I recently discovered this particular photo and I found very quickly that it helps me find an inner peace. In this photo the landscape is simple. There are a few scraggly mountains with a plain off in the distance. It all seems so natural and untouched, just as nature intended. There’s no one around, instilling a quiet in the photo. The sky even seems quiet as it is filled with muted hues of blue and red. The sun sets off in the distance, gently falling below the horizon, with the promise that it’ll return the next day.

The special thing about this sunset is where it was photographed, for the photo I focus on is a photograph of a Martian sunset, and I find it amazingly beautiful.

A larger version of the photograph is available here.

In this season of “goodwill toward men”, the same season that has been highlighted by the fatal trampling of a man trying to do his job at a Black Friday sale, all in the interest of purchasing a deeply discounted gift to give another in remembrance of someone else’s birthday that most likely took place in the spring or fall, I would like to address a misconception about my religious beliefs.

There are some that believe that because I am not afraid to question some of the idiocy that people spout all in the name of religion that I therefore do not believe in some sort of higher power. This is not true. To think that human beings are the most evolved and highest power in the Universe is not only naive but greatly insulting to whomever designed this whole master plan. I do not believe that there is a White Man with flowing robes and a beard sitting up in the sky somewhere ready to damn his creations to eternal damnation because they have made errors during this whole learning process called life. I do not believe that there is a whole “pick and choose” process of who gets into paradise and who doesn’t. I do not believe that any man that was granted and therefore wielded such awesome power would have such failings as hate, bigotry and revenge.

These are human emotions, dahling.

I am a reincarnationist. I believe that we come back to learn more and more about this whole human experience. In between human lives we get to hang out on “the other side” for a while, discuss, study and reflect as to what we learned during out last life and then go back and try again. I also believe that there is a higher power that we can only strive to comprehend. This higher power isn’t “male” or “female” but the some of both. This higher power is constructed of love and is all encompassing. It can be seen all around us, in nature, in each others. Some choose to tuck it away but it’s there.

Many organised religions do their best to scare their followers so that they’ll just keep following them. Such organisations are nothing more than a grand attempt at controlling the masses. Those that are controlled fear what lies beyond that control and that’s why they do their best to keep the “free-thinkers” down. They are afraid of those that step outside the box and actually take time to think for themselves.

Do I consider myself an atheist? I do not, but I consider my beliefs to be “spiritual”, not “religious”. My primary belief is that we were designed to think, and thinking is what we should do.

There is a bit of an uproar over an atheist display in the state of Washington. While I fully support this display, simply because I believe anyone should be able to speak their mind, I really like the simple message that they are sharing with the world.

“Just be good for goodness’ sake.”

Browsing through the “App Store” on my iPhone the other night I noticed an application called “mindWave”. This particular program is designed to help the listener with meditation techniques through the use of sounds, a sort of shortcut into a transcendental state. Think of it as Zen with a technological twist.

The mindWave program, along with many other products out there, use a technique called binaural beats. Using a pair of headphones and stereo sound, certain brainwaves are triggered by the difference in frequencies in the sound that is being played by the program. The tones are masked in pink noise so that you don’t go mad from listening to something akin to the old Emergency Broadcast System two-tone warning sound. This Wikipedia article explains the theory much better than I ever could. The mindWave program uses different frequencies to start up different types of brain waves depending on what you’re trying to achieve: deep sleep, mental clarity, focus, energising, etc.

I tried the program yesterday morning and found myself to be a little more energised than usual for the early shift at work. Granted, this could be just a placebo effect but nevertheless, I felt good yesterday. Last night I tried the “get ready for sleep” tones and found that I slept right through the night until the alarm went off. I haven’t done that in a few weeks. Again, it could be a placebo effect but I must admit that I feel well rested today.

Similar more elaborate and expensive programs have much more to offer in the types of binaural beats produced and what it can do for the human mind. Some caution that because of the meditation-like qualities from this practice, one can find old ill feelings surfacing as the mind rediscovers this negativity and tries to purge it. The same thing happens during traditional meditation. I must admit that I am finding myself a little cranky today and I’m curious as to if this is the reason why. It could be that I’m just in a cranky mood. I have a few demons in my closet that could use a good exorcism, though so maybe some of those cobwebs are getting cleaned out from parts of my brain that I haven’t visited in a while.

Suffice it to say that I am very interested with this technological twist on meditation. While I have no intention (nor the funds) to invest in some elaborate program, my little mindWave iPhone app is quite intriguing.

I look forward to continuing the experiment.