New Year, New You?

I want to reflect on the notion of renewing oneself to start the new year.  It is a very prevalent lament that we can cleanse ourselves of the bad properties of 2011 while assuming ground-breaking, wholesome attributes for 2012. I like the driving force behind the idea, the energy, but I do not agree with the underlying philosophy.

There is an implication, in new year's renewal, that we are somehow inherently broken and this year, this upcoming year, we will finally fix it. To this I disagree. I believe we come equipped with all of the tools necessary to be 'complete and wholesome' and it does not require a particular date on a calendar to tell us to call upon these tools. We carry these tools with us unknowingly throughout the calendar year yet we wait for the first day of the next year to implement them - I question the wisdom of this conventional way of thinking.

It would seem to me that any morning, on any given day, we can 'cleanse' so to speak: quit smoking, lose weight, stop cussing at your animals, terminating the inclination to lie about yourself habitually, and the list goes on. Let us count the ways in which we are broken but do nothing to fix them until one day, the very first day, of the following year.

Instead I propose that we regard every day life with hope, the hope that we can change ourselves, be the person we want to be, be better for others, now. We do not have to wait for the tide to abate, or the influx of opposition to die down, or for the apple, peach, or giant balloons to drop. Do that if you want, but know that you can rise from bed on any given day and be the person you have always wanted to be. You are that person now, masquerading as something broken - of which you are not.

So the choice is yours. Enjoy the new year's celebration for what it is, but know that every day is a new year's day, and you can have that alloy resolve to change every day if the need is there. Have fun tonight and bask in the abundance of celebration, I know I will be, and it will be a blast! But I will have that much more fun in knowing that I am not in need of repair, or that I only have one day afforded to me to fix it all. 

Happy new year to all of you who read this! The time is always now to be who you want to be, because you are already there. 

Spelunking Into Oneself.

I have not made it entirely clear to everyone the reasons why I am accepting a one year contract to work as a paramedic in Iraq. I have not done my duty in rationalizing aloud to you all the reason(s) why I would voluntarily place myself in a hostile country on the cusp of a civil war. I have been remiss in my responsibility to tell you that the driving force behind me doing this has nothing to do with the money I will be receiving.

I am doing this because I needed a pause button. Every day life is chaos, and not just mine. I guarantee your life is chaotic as well. Perhaps you cannot see it so clearly right now, just sitting there and reading these words. However, when you consider the summation of our personal evolutions, you may find that many of us have a composition of other peoples' ideas. From what to wear, to what to say (quoting others), to  what to think  (consider news media, reading books with another person's thoughts and ideas in them and then adapting those ideas to one's own life), to how to be (religion and any other habit-enforcing information). How much of this is truly you?

I have applied this very question to myself and found the depth of my findings paper-thin. I gauge my own composition by how comfortable I am sitting alone with nothing distracting me. How long can I sit and simply exist with myself? How long will it be before another person's ideas, thoughts, or works enter my head? If you can't think of examples of this then you either are not being honest enough or not trying very hard. The hobbies of most of us have less to do with being creators and using our own minds and much more to do with passively allowing the efforts of other people enter our minds. Perhaps this is not a bad thing, but then that simply means you are at ease with the idea of not developing as a person.

There is a distinct difference between developing as a person, by forging your own way, and simply doing as society has taught or demanded you to do. Ever since we were old enough to learn, we have been molded - sometimes subtly and sometimes with great coercion - to do and to think as others see fit. The mind is made to learn these things, and they do have their place in limited capacity, but the mind is also intended to create as well as to express. Yet these two properties are being ever more malnourished as we evolve as a species.

So back to the topic at hand: I am accepting this one year contract to work in Iraq because I am very aware of the isolation and the absolute boredom it may entail, and I invite it. Where other people are beginning to dread the implications of a year in the middle of a desert with little to do, I invite it. Now is the time when I will begin to discover myself, and become at peace with simply being alone with myself.

For too long I have felt a subtle panic when boredom began to surface. I would reach for my phone, the TV remote, or video games. Much harm has come, on a worldly basis, from mankind's aversion to boredom. Though I find value in the toil and efforts of other great thinkers, I wish to confine myself to my own great thoughts, and cultivate my own great ideas.

It is time to learn how to quiet the mind and venture inward. I don't think it is worthwhile to worry about who is saying mean things about me when I am not around, or what the latest fashion is. I need to cease being bothered by what others are doing, which political party is doing what, or what music is better than some other music. Revolution cannot be forced, it cannot be shouted for incessantly. True, meaningful revolution begins on a personal level, by one person committed to truly changing themselves, or at the very least forwarding themselves in a true fashion. The aforementioned is why I will be gone for a year.

When I return in good health (and I will - safely and happily, do not worry) I will not look or act radically different. Do not fret, because I will not change who I am, I will merely hone who I am.

The Muted Mercy Plea.

Sitting idly in the ambulance and cursing our lack of air conditioning, we are parked in an abandoned corner lot in the very last reserve ambulance of our fleet - meaning, the very worst ambulance we have to offer. Ten hours into the shift and we have not stopped sweating, even as we are resting beneath the shady awning of the abandoned chicken eatery. It's days like these when you beg for a call because at least then you get some semblance of air conditioning with the windows down at whatever speed we may be traveling - much faster than zero, our present speed.

As you will find, this is a lesson on mercy, and it is with this mercy that the dispatcher calls our unit, gives the address, and we're quickly en route to a "person unconscious, possibly not breathing" in a trailer park community on the outskirts of our zone. The response is without incident as I sit idly by in the passenger seat, and the EMT drives me there. In times like these I normally find myself mulling over ACLS protocols, drug dosages, and a bevy of what-ifs. This time I sit and just breathe without any sort of expectation. I do make a mental note, however, that the call address is vaguely familiar.

We arrive and are greeted by a large pit bull snarling and barking, though ineffectually as he/she is restrained by a heavy gauge chain attached to a railroad spike driven deep into the ground. We push our stretcher past, encumbered with so many medical bags and cardiac monitor in preparation for who knows what. A police cruiser arrives shortly behind us and the officer picks up his stride to make sure he can enter before we do, for safety. We follow in behind him.

A wall of odor envelopes us as we step inside the dimly lit trailer. The floor is a patchwork of rotting planks, plyboard, cardboard tamped down with tiny nails and haphazard void spaces throughout the flooring which we identify by both the sinking effect of the soiled carpet and our previous knowledge of having been to this address several times. We ease the stretcher past and the odor is getting stronger. We pass by ten gallon plastic buckets filled with oily yellow urine and clumps of acrid feces. Perhaps it's just me, but I tend to feel more at ease when I discover the origin of the various odors I encounter in this job, even if it is buckets of fresh excrement.

Stepping tentatively into the very back bedroom we hear a baby crying - an infant unattended in her crib. There are three males in the room, 20-somethings, two awake and obviously paranoid and one male spilling in between a mattress and the wall with his face buried in the crevice. It would be a waste of time to interrogate the two conscious males and probably not in the best interests of the guy sandwiched in the corner so we stride past and pull the unconscious male out of his makeshift nook.

Upon rolling the male over we find he is indeed unconscious, with blue lips, cold hands and blue fingertips. I am counting his respirations as I survey the rest of his body - soiled wife beater, sweatpants, and white socks soiled green and brown from I don't know what. Instinctively I re-assess his arms and find a child's belt still tautly ratcheted around his bicep. Heavy tissue scarring and track marks are scrawled across his antecubital regions and forearms. On cue, an empty syringe is found gleaming in the periphery of my vision, it reflecting the only light entering the room through disheveled blinds.

The police officer is quickly relegated to watch over the tiny child in the crib and we hoist the unconscious, barely-alive male onto the stretcher. It would be my inclination right now to judge and condemn this man, and perhaps I should, but I resist. We secure the male with three seat belts across his legs waist and torso and lift the stretcher to its mobile position. I should curse the man for making me trek across a booby-trapped living room, over buckets of piss and shit, just to reach him, and yet I don't. Looking up I see pictures of the likeness of this man, and he's joyfully cradling what I identify to be the child in the crib, and there is also a female in the picture. A sign of better times, times not so riddled with demons.

There are so many avenues for suffering in this life, and so many ways to become apprehended by it, and by and large I find that the suffering my patients incur is of their own construction. With every avenue of suffering there is a healthy way to resolve it, but some people can't seem to find it.

We're quickly moving the patient out of the trailer, bumping across the broken concrete and gravel driveway and loading the male into the ambulance. A wooden sign hangs above the front door of the trailer which displays "A blessed family lives here." So many times we are trying to find ways to dehumanize the people who do wrong, in the face of abundant evidence of their humanity. Despite many wrong turns this man is made of the same flesh as me, created in the same way that I was, and he has smiled surely in ways that I have smiled, laughed as I have, and rejoiced in ways that I have. He has crumpled to his knees like me, and he has cried like me, but he has handled his problems differently. He has handled his problems in a human way, within the broad spectrum of human responses to a problem, and yet most would only judge him. It's so easy to do, and especially at this juncture he has allowed himself to be quite susceptible to it.

My partner makes a remark about this patient being a piece of trash. I tell him to hop up front and drive us to the hospital. It saves me from listening to judgmental racket. I need silence to operate.

The ambulance emerges from the driveway and claws toward the hospital ten minutes away. Back to the patient: he is breathing four times a minute and his heart rate is slowing. He is neatly packaged at death's doorstep and funeral arrangements are already being conceived in the cosmos without his knowing. Days from now he may say he saw a light.

I pop on medical gloves and set out IV supplies. I inspect the patient's arms for an IV site but nearly every go-to region is scarred to shit from years of IV drug abuse. Looking further up the arm, past the tattoo which says "LUV 4 MY BABY" I find a basilic vein on the underside of the crook of his left arm. Makes sense, it's hard to insert an IV on the underside of your own arm. Just inches away there's no good real estate at all for a suitable IV but this vein is pristine. I prep the site, prepare the IV catheter and look through the ambulance to the road ahead and see a straightaway ahead. Good, time to get this IV. I sink a twenty gauge catheter, twist on the adapter and secure the site with tape.

Maybe this guy wants to die. The panicked look on his friends' faces in that bedroom hint at otherwise. Most people cope with a bad day by having a few beers in the evening, perhaps he coped with a bad day by slamming two syringes of heroin into his circulation. The pictures hanging on his wall of his family tell of better times, of times that could be had again. Every day is a new day to rewrite all of the adulterated passages of our lives. Here lies a man with a muted plea for mercy. I can't judge him now.

I grab the vial of Narcan, an opiate-agonist antagonist. Basically it clogs up the opioid receptors in the brain so that no more true opiates can permeate, reversing the effects of whatever may be on board with this guy right now - which I'm pretty sure is a copious amount of heroin. I draw up the entirety of the vial and drop the empty vial into the sharps container. I slowly push the medication into the IV adapter followed by a flush of 10 mL of normal saline to ensure it circulates.

"Two minutes!" my partner yells back. The best case scenario is that I will be wrestling with a very angry and confused person for the next two minutes until hospital staff can help me. The worst case scenario is I've got the differential diagnosis all wrong and I'll be doing chest compressions soon.

The ambulance lopes onto the emergency room ramp and we back up to  the ER doors. The patient stirs, his eyes open and he strains to look all around him. I am seated behind him and he peers at me with a flash of anger. I ball my fists, ready to hold this guy down until help can arrive. He struggles briefly against the seat belt restrains, shuts his eyes tightly, and takes a deep breath.

I take a deep breath with him.

When his eyes are open again they are filled with tears.

"Where is my baby girl?! Did you leave her there all alone?!"

I calmly reply no, she is at home safe. A police officer is taking care of her.

Silence.

Tears are streaming. His voice creaks, "Thank you man..."

Once docility is ensured, we unload the patient, now pink warm and breathing normally, and wheel him into the emergency room. I turn him over to the nurses and physician and give my report. I don't bother explaining about the buckets of urine and feces, the trailer with more holes in the floor than intact surfaces, or the baby who was sitting in close proximity to her father as he injected a near-fatal amount of heroin. Not yet, anyway.

Some things are better left unsaid, for now. I return to my ambulance to complete the report, still sweating as much as I was before the call went out. My partner hops in the driver's seat. "What a piece of shit!" he exclaims. I look up, ready to say something, but I digress, and just breathe, and type my report. Still sweating, life goes on.

Round Peg, Square Hole.

There is so much seeking in this world. Nearly every action is so firmly rooted in either pleasure seeking or pain avoidance (which is really another way of indirectly seeking pleasure). To clear the mind I sit and I meditate. I want to operate independently of these learned motives of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance, as this is the only way to be free of fear. Fear declares so much dominion upon all living things.

It is one modest action to simply read these words. It is quite a bold commitment to actually try to live them. I have existed as a quiet and unimposing person, and it does not work for very long before people begin pointing at you and referring to you as some variation of "the quiet one" or "the weird one" and so on. There is a very good quote which says "Do no speak unless you can improve upon the silence." yet in today's maddening world it is the status quo. Existing against the status quo will cause a separation from the other people you live in close proximity with and ultimately generates estrangement. Persistent alienation of this sort may even cause one to be outcast completely. Is this what it means to live righteously? Were the various 'deities' throughout history so righteous and rigid in their beliefs that they endured such isolation? To what end does any of this even matter?

To exist as a silent and peaceful person always maintaining presence is to exist as a round peg in a world comprised of square holes. I surmise that this is why so many Buddhist practitioners eventually relent to the monastic life where such a lifestyle of silence, presence, and peace is accepted and even promoted. Such is not the case in the often chaotic world we presently live in.

Amid this confusion I have resolved to perform a pilgrimage of sorts next July or August of 2012 - a Yatra in Sanskrit. I seek the answer to this postulation. I believe in the teachings of the dharma but find it difficult to live this way in our present day without compromise. I will seek out those who can tell me if there is even a possibility of merging both venues. I think with great care it can be done, though I perceive that there will still be minor compromises. Perhaps these are simply my own mental formations leading me to believe this. All I know is that when I am silent and ever-present I am very happy, though most people assume I am upset or angry when I am silent for prolonged periods. This is not at all a continuing endorsement to remain mindful and silent, even if it is what I enjoy.

I appreciate the challenge this presents. Life is in itself a challenge to navigate in wellness, and so I appreciate the difficulty. One day I will discover whether or not living in wellness (based on my preferences) requires isolation/monasticism or compromise.

The Hermit vs. the Dream Dynasty Builder.

I have spent much time recently pondering what is more worthwhile: knowing oneself or immersing oneself in advanced ideas and thoughts? Perhaps I word it favorably and most people select the "knowing oneself" option, but is this so? I have not quantified statistics, but in my anecdotal observations in life so far it seems that attending college is vastly more important than embarking on a quest to know oneself in solitude while backpacking in the mountains. I understand that much of this has to do with the way society is structured and the demands it places on the individual to succeed, but after much thought is seems incredibly remiss not to give more weight to the idea of knowing oneself better.

We are existing in a time when it is unbearable to be bored. I am guilty of this too. Imagine, you are seated in a doctor's office awaiting your turn to see the doctor, and so you scramble to occupy your mind. You are reaching into your pocket for your smart phone, or scanning the room for a magazine to read, or perhaps even looking amid the occupants of the same waiting room for someone to strike up conversation with. The last option itself is of a dying breed as we become more antisocial. The last thing we would like to do, myself included in many cases, is simply sit in your seat with nothing to do.

I am discovering more and more the value of sitting in one place and doing nothing. There was a time very recently when I did not want to be left alone with myself, but it is to me a necessary exercise to acquire inner peace. While I have been sharing a commuting van with 8-10 other classmates in training I have found that many people I ride with are uncomfortable with silence. These days I find myself craving the solitude and peacefulness of silence. What is right? What is wrong? Nothing. There is no need to evaluate either way. Perhaps we should all do what makes us happy.

Therein we find the caveat. Doing things all the time eventually leads to unhappiness for many people. A sort of neurosis sets in which makes us uneasy with the idea of having nothing to do. It is very neurotic to not be able to do nothing. There are many times when action is warranted, but in our leisurely downtime, we may do well to simply sit and just be.

So again I pose this: who is the wiser soul? The hermit or the dream dynasty builder? We can immerse ourselves very deeply in the writings of prominent philosophers and try to emulate these high areas of thought, but where are we after we are done? Are we seeking out even more dream dynasties to build? Are we ever becoming happier, more complete persons? Is there creedence in simply being the hermit, content to just sit and breathe?

I can only offer my own mortal and often flawed perspective. I have found great solace in sitting meditation, walking meditation, and the ability to exist comfortably - and more important, peacefully - in silence. It has carried over into my work. I have been able to care for severely sick and injured people in a more calm and calculated state. Ever since my serious implementation of meditation, I have not found myself sweating profusely and fretting over whether or not I would be able to provide adequate treatment for a dying patient. I have simply done it. Succinctly put, fear is leaving me. It is because of meditation.

Fear is a machination of the mind. We can fear being bitten by a dog all day long. Or we can be bitten by the dog finally and realize that yes, it hurts, but no, it is not as bad as we perceived it to be. The mind is so slippery in how it tricks us.  There was a time when I would fret over having to resuscitate a small child, because it is dreadful to the mind to imagine this. Having met this scenario a few times now, I know that in the moment it is not as fearsome as I perceived it in a preconceived fashion. All things are like this. Tattoos are not as painful as our preconception of tattoo pain is. Confronting someone who is harming you is not nearly as fearsome as the thought of doing so.

It is the mind. The mind is not the enemy to us, but it can certainly seem as such. It is for this reason that I think the hermit is the victor when pitted against the dream dynasty builder. I can construct my empire of high thoughts for decades, but if they are not solidified in practice, what are these thoughts worth? They burn away like morning dew when exposed to the heat of reality.

And then, after long enough and with plenty of application of meditation, I find that fear is not a component of life lest we allow it to be so. If this is so, then we can vanquish most fear. If we can vanquish most fear in life, then we can be happy and never have to seek security. We can always seek adventure. This is a sort of enlightenment. It is important to me to continually understand that enlightenment is amorphous and ever fleeting. It can be attained in a moment and perhaps even maintained with enough mindfulness, but it is never solely mine to keep. It is not a status I acquire and champion for life. There must be effort always to maintain it, but the maintenance becomes easier with this effort.

I am beginning to understand that I will not be the same after this contract. This year long sabbatical has already begun to unweave the fabric of prior ego and I feel the unveiling of the person I have wanted to be, but did not have the courage to be before. It takes so much more courage to smile than to frown or scowl. Life implores more fortitude of us to adventure rather than stay put. I have many places to see and much to do, but have only recently found the resolve to do so.

All of this acquiescence to the unknown and the daring has been made possible by my resolution to sit and do nothing. It all starts with this, it is forever at the heart of this, and I vow to maintain this. To be a happy and purposeful person, I will sit and do nothing. In no thing we can find every thing. Think about that.

To Be Human Again.

When we are awash in the murk of perpetual thought, our minds can be taken to a place very far away from the present moment. Compound this condition with the fact that we exist in a culture which endorses evaluation of all things and we begin to lose our humanity. Deeply ingrained in the circuitry of our minds is the evaluation mechanism. We are cultured to evaluate the worth of all that we see as opposed to simply seeing an object for what it really is. In this way, the true beauty or majesty of said object may evade us as we are too busy deciding whether or not the object is worthwhile. Our minds, after some time, become similar to a filing cabinet and we tuck our surroundings into the good file, the bad file, or the indifferent file. Truly, our filing systems are much more vast than to have just three folders but you get the idea. Is it possible that we should cease evaluating each and every little thing? I think so. It is a very neurotic and taxing process in the first place. Perhaps we would be better off simply beholding the object for what it is. There is much peace to be gained when you simply behold life instead of judging or scoring it. When I rise from a recently completed sitting meditation session, I feel as close to being human as I will ever be. I feel raw and all sensory data is very new and wonderful to me. I am cleansed of predisposition and smiling is so easy. But it seems there is a half life to the effects of the sitting meditation session and so I have resolved to do them even more frequently. I believe my well being in Iraq may very well be determined by how well I keep good habits and maintenance of a mindful approach to living. I am equipped with all of the necessary tools to complete this contract and it is for that reason that I often repeat myself: do not worry for me, I will do fine. I don't fear and neither should you.

Love Or, To Attempt To Bottle Lightning.

Love is often ruminated upon. Surely we all, at some point, have sat and thought of love.  It would be very difficult to dispute the vitality of love and how very necessary it is in order for the world to maintain some semblance of peace. That said, the world is definitely not a peaceful place overall and much of this can likely be traced down to a lack of love.

I believe I have loved, perhaps not in the purest form, but I do think that I have.  In my past relationships I have made folly, I have excelled, and most importantly to me, I have learned. With time I am beginning to understand the nature of love and I have tasked myself tonight with unveiling love, what we perceive to be love, and all motives which drive our perceptions of love.

So what is love? In what many people perceive as love, we are seeking pleasure and security in another person. We love the other person because they please us emotionally, sexually, and even spiritually (to those who worship their counterpart). We love the person who cooks our meals, cleans our homes, or provides financial structure for us to continue living how we would like to live. We love the person who cares for and teaches our children. But is this not merely a matter of selfishness and agenda-making? It must be. Peer into the heart of your intents and you may find the same. This is scary to some, and requires great honesty to properly assess your history of love.

The above paragraph makes love out to be a falsehood. An idea. Ideas are excellent, but they are not tangible and therefore not reality. But then, what binds the fabric of our existence? It must be love. Why do we rise in the morning at all, if love does not exist? Why do we persist in a world which guarantees suffering if love does not exist? It simply must exist, because it is the reason there is perceived goodness in the world, and this is apart from selfish agenda. There is love and that is why there is beauty. We would not care to behold beauty if it were not infused with love.

We are back at square one. First, we must question the intentions and motives in our minds when we resolve to love someone. Divorce rates are so rampant, and I think much of this has to do with not properly assessing your own motives and intentions when you engage a person with your love. As so many of us have experienced, love is so enthralling but it is also a weapon. So many people have loved someone but, in a sudden turn of events, have begun to hate that very same person when conditions were no longer convenient for them.

This seems like a good start! Questioning your intentions. You say to yourself, "I think I love this person." Now ask yourself why. Undoubtedly, there will be reasons within your mind which have brought you to the point of loving this person. Perhaps they are beautiful, or they are very caring, and provide great security to your heart. It is OK to love for these reasons, for we are all human and forever bound to our ego (for the most part). But the next step seems trickier.

Freedom is love. Are you willing to be the guarantor of freedom to this person? Most people secretly wish to control their counterpart, and want there to be some sort of security measure in place. "Do not sleep with other people." Sometimes this turns into, "Do not talk to other people of the opposite sex very much." We do a lot of this to guarantee our own security, but we must relinquish the need for security in relationships, and that goes hand in hand with granting freedom. I do not mean freedom as in having an open relationship (unless that is what makes you happy!), I mean freedom as in allowing your lover to exist freely as their own person, without constraints.

This makes you feel raw to consider at first. You are so raw and exposed when you are trying to promote freedom. Perhaps this will make you feel better: without freedom, happiness cannot be achieved! It simply cannot. Think of it: we are only able to use expression, laughter, clear contemplation, and growth when we are free. If we are employing vagaries that bind our partner, then we are not letting them live fully. And if you truly love someone, shouldn't you want them to live fully? As I said, this is tough and makes us raw and blistered.

To grant freedom, we cannot forbid actions, condemn ideas, or resent the way our other lives freely. I would say that it is necessary to be with someone while they are behaving freely to make sure you truly love them.

The take-away, I believe, is that in order to love we must be willing to do what is sometimes the most difficult thing of all: nothing. Are you able to do nothing? To create no provisions on your relationship, to think no thoughts of control or to seek no security, that is to give the world to someone. It may be that in order to give the world to the person you love, you must not be with them. Does that make sense to you? The abandonment of self is required in order to give the love which you think your partner deserves. That is very important to me.

I have sat for so long, thinking about love, trying to catch lightning in a bottle and sum up love so succinctly. And for the longest time I believed it was rooted in selfishness. But it is not. Grant freedom, abandon self, and this begets true love. See what happens when you try. Do not seek security, do not implement sanctions, simply be, and enjoy true love. Be so very happy for your lover to be their true selves in front of you.

You can wake tomorrow and begin doing this. You can do it right now! This is one of so many reasons why life is very good to us. The possibilities in any moment are limitless.

With love.

Absolute Solitude - The Barrier Breaking Machine.

It is imperative that I sit down and do nothing. All I do is sit here and breathe in and out and think of nothing except of the wind whooshing and my breath going in and out. I feel the particular sensations of being alive all about me and I sit quietly and still and with good posture. And this will do. It is all I need to do for the next 15-20 minutes. Some call this meditation.

But you may also call it the barrier breaking machine. My post yesterday went into some detail about the barriers our minds create as we acquire life experience, and how to disintegrate those harmful barriers. This act of sitting and doing nothing is a fast track to eroding the barriers of the mind.

When I slip into my barrier breaking machine and assume a proper meditation posture and engage, I am a person of no color. I am of no country, of no pride, and I assume no affiliation of any sort. I flagellate freely in outer space as a person free of judgments and without predisposition. When I exit from the machine, I am a person with barriers still, but they are eroded. I hope one day they will come down, but for now, they simply become more brittle in anticipation of the day in which they will crumble.

When I am in deep meditation I cannot find the time to ponder politic, gender, race, sex, or conflict of any sort. I am in a heaven away from it all that is very much absent of turmoil. I am merely myself, sitting and staring my human nature in the face.

And what do I find? Human nature.  I find that human nature, stripped down, is a very good thing. I find that we are all humans trying to survive in a sometimes cruel world in the best way that we know how. When I surmise this, I understand why I am slighted, why I have been cut off in traffic, why the man in front of me cusses at the barista at the coffee shop, why people who 'love' one another hurt each other. It is because we are human, and as best we can, we are crudely clawing our way toward what we perceive to be peace.

It may be that some people go about it all wrong. When I sit down on the floor or the ground and do nothing, you may perceive that I do exactly that - nothing. But I am achieving my own peace. With each breath that goes in and each breath that leaves me, I am perceiving no sort of ambiguation of the mind, and no mental bondage restrains me. When I come to and rise and return to the 'real world', I feel at ease and know that all is well despite the evident chaos of the world.

This is a state of absolute solitude. It is indeed a super power that can be achieved by anyone willing to do so. It is as vital as a drink of water to me, for I have found ephemeral peace with it. It is the barrier breaking machine, and I hope to one day bring down the barriers that persist in my perception of the world.

Seeking Pleasure, Evading Pain.

I write this from my small cherry oak desk in a hotel room in Cape Canaveral, FL on a Tuesday night. A lot has changed since the last time I updated this blog. I am no longer a professional firefighter or paramedic practicing emergency medicine. I am, as I have been many times in my life, a student again. Enrolled in orientation classes just prior to additional counter terrorism training I will be attending next week. In several weeks I will be on a jet en route to Kuwait, at which point I will hope aboard a Blackhawk or C-130 and fly to a base in Iraq where I will work out of an emergency clinic for the next year. To my good friends who know me in person and read this, I will not see you until July at the earliest.

There is financial and professional gain at stake here. My well-being is at stake and I would be remiss if I did not tell you that. However, despite the acknowledgement of the imminent hazard of my duty, I fathom that what is most at stake is my spirituality (or lack thereof). I keep quiet about these things typically, but anyone who employs even a slight modicum of investigative work could read past posts on this blog and surmise the Buddhist undertones which guide their vector. If I had to identify, I would say that I am a person who practices Buddhism. I do not employ its teachings dogmatically and will entertain the possibility of any religion (so long as I can find some sort of logical creedence in it) because I do not think the brain was designed to be a rigid thing.

I would like to talk about rigidity of the mind and its origins.

As many Buddhist philosophers have asserted, and as Krishnamurti has asserted in his work "Freedom From The Known", as we accumulate experience and stow it away in the reserves of our minds, we begin to roughly categorize our perceptions as pleasure or pain. The inclination of most people is to seek pleasure and to evade pain. This makes sense in an evolutionary sense as well as a spiritual sense. Most religions could very well be justified from this basic tenet.

The rigidity sets in over time as we preconceive present and future events based on assimilated feelings on past experiences. As an example: you may have stepped on a snake a decade ago and consequently it bit you and it hurt. Thus, to this day you tread carefully along every path. Why? Is there a snake awaiting you at all times? I do not think so. You are behaving according to past experience, and though this example may not resonate, it can be applied to so many things. Ultimately, these preconceptions based on past experience, past pain, implement mental barriers. 'I have driven this vehicle and spent a lot of money buying gasoline to fuel it. I will not buy this vehicle again.' That is a barrier.

The more barriers we put up in our minds, the more rigid the mind becomes. This precludes logic after incessant barrier-making. Before long, you are no longer the wide-eyed youth capable of accepting most things as they are and without predisposition. Instead you are the aging republican who likes only Chevrolet and Coca-Cola products and thinks climate change is a hoax. The problem with this is that the marginalize the capability of the mind, and you dismiss very viable information and possibilities which could make you happier. Furthermore, it simply tends to make you an obtuse and angry individual.

Contrarily, the mind also recalls pleasures. It becomes the mind's inclination to seek pleasure. This fosters addictions to so many things, and these addictions extend beyond the realm of chemicals which we normally consider the addiction culprits. Video games, TV, sleeping in your bed. These are all just fine to an extent but damaging in excess, as anything can be. The mind's preconceptions about pleasure and the past recollection of what is pleasure and what is pain steer us in every moment of our lives. In every moment of our waking lives we are being steered by pleasure seeking and pain avoidance.

That is, unless we employ mindfulness and equanimity.

The key to disrupting this pattern of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance is to acquire and maintain mindfulness. The most severe implication of the pleasure seeking, pain avoiding behavior is that is absolutely robs us of the joy, richness, and intricacies of the present moments. The mind becomes so preoccupied with considering what may happen in the future or fretting over what has happened in the past that we completely ransack the only experience that truly matters: right now! And now. And now!

It will take more than reading a single blog entry to revolutionize your worldview and ease the rigidity of your mind, but it is entirely possible if you resolve that it is absolutely vital to do so. If you want to reacquire presence, and re-live life to its richest extent, hearing music for the first time and watching movies for the first time all over again, then you must shed the habit energy of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. Pleasure is not the answer to a better life and pain is a gateway to growth. And the mind's machinations to seek and avoid these things completely deprives us of the one truly important moment: now.

The Polarity of Ego.

At the heart of Buddhist teachings is the practice of relinquishing one's ego. This is done by acknowledging the fact that we have ego - usually observed as our 'identity'. Example: Historically, I have not liked Spam (the amalgam of meats compressed into a cube) and could identify myself as "Oh, I am that guy who doesn't like Spam." This extends to all facets of life, and if we are not mindful, we can find  ourselves trapped by our own ego and identity.

Contrarily, ego propels us. It is our ego, the manifestation of our future selves in our mind's eye, that compels us to better ourselves, typically. Example: if strength training with weights did not yield desirable changes in physical appearance, would the motivation to strength train remain the same? Truly, some people strength train for reasons not related to aesthetics, but in American culture, this is not always so.

As with many things, with consideration of the positive and negative implications of ego, there must be balance. I am a paramedic, and it is my ego which drives me to improve my knowledge base and skill in the procedures and treatments concerning my job. In ways, it is my passion, and I derive great pleasure from doing the job well. However, I can recognize that this is simply an ego game. I only further myself as a paramedic to feed my ego. We all do these things, and it is human. I want to have that ego identifier - "Dustin Pumm: excellent paramedic" - and this pursuit is benign in moderation.

It is when vital aspects of life are neglected in this pursuit that the ego game begins to destroy. For me, I taper back from ego engagements way before this becomes a concern. Though others may find it odd that a person could fervently improve themselves in a particular aspect and then just as quickly resign from the torrid regimen, it speaks to me as a truthful and genuine path to maintain. If there is anything I have learned thus far in this life, it is that I will elect to engage in actions that speak truth to me, and from which I can derive much positive energy.

So for you, my reader, I encourage you to gaze within, intently and with deliberation. Identify the initiatives in your life which you have a passion for and wish to further, but remain ever present in this very moment, and realize when to digress from these pursuits. Realize also that pride may seem like a good quality, when in reality it tends to stunt our spiritual growth.

I seek raw experience. Pain and enlightenment. Effort and catharsis. I know now where the good energies are stored, and what preoccupations house bad energies. When I read frequently, I write frequently. When I write frequently, I smile. And when I smile, I am happy. Smiling has come to me much easier these days.

I wish the same for you. Enjoy the pleasantries of Thanksgiving if you are able, and if you are not, be glad to be in good health. And even if this is not so, find happiness in being alive.

Hello, I'm 28!

You need to know something about me, and you need to know it now: I am 28 years old. I have pondered this age for the last few idle moments, and I have never considered 28 to be a hallmark year in my life. I never fancied myself as a 28 year old at the pinnacle of anything, or that the age in itself would represent some sort of pinnacle. Yet here I am, ruminating upon this interesting age. At 28 years old, I am so happy. At 28 years old, I love everyone who is in my life and those who have departed it. I think of everyone fondly. All of you so human with your own fears and dreams and reservations and ultimately your freedoms and hopes.

It occurred to me last night that freedom is the ultimate gift. It is tantamount to all meaningful life. Freedom begets life. It is with the opportune moments that freedom yields that we are able to carve out a meaningful existence. In this passing relationship of Kimlee and I, I learned that yielding personal gain for the sake of freedom for someone else is a far greater deed than whatever avenue could be taken in selfish endeavor. The stabbing pain of loss eroded as I realized that letting go was the great enabler, and now she is free, as I am, and we cannot be unhappy when we are free.

There are times when, even in a state of true freedom, we do not realize that we are free. We are captivated by demons of worry, by fears which rarely ever manifest, and by the popular culture of society which is paper-thin in depth and meaning.

I am 28 years old and I am leaving. I am going away to Iraq to work as a contracted paramedic for a year for an independent company. I may be gone for two years. When I go, wherever I go, I will be free. My freedom, my liberation, begins with a breath. The breath unlocks a gaze of ever-presence as I see everything around me for the first time, again. Freedom is abound in the multitudinous sensations of existing. I feel gentle breezes, warmth, cold, tingling, relief, pain, and release.

While I am gone, I will use this blog to document my time away. I want to stay close to you all as I am away, and this is perhaps the most healing way for me to do so.

Did you know that all I have ever truly wanted to do is be a writer? I became a firefighter in part because of childhood desire (thanks, uncle) but also because of the absolute deluge of experiences which would be at my disposal when I finally put ink to paper. I did not account for the rupturous amounts of growth that would ensue as I worked as a firefighter, an EMT, and a paramedic during those years. In that time I bore witness to raw human emotion, loss, depravity, hope, and fellowship. I have met the very best and the very worst of people in my time as a firefighter and paramedic.

I will write, I will be safe, and I will keep in touch. Likewise, you may keep in touch with me on Facebook, Twitter, or here. I plan to update regularly. (Don't I always plan to?)

Namaste,
Dustin

Stasis on Demand.

I breathe in,

I breathe out,

Only I can liberate "me",

I return to myself to be free.

I scribbled out this note/poem in the fire truck today during one of the many occasions in which I was fortunate enough to be stuck in traffic on a miraculously beautiful day. This note exists in stark contrast when I reflect upon my ways of thinking as a teenager. At some point as a teenager I felt it incumbent to over complicate life. This trend persisted into my early 20s and surely these tendencies are reanimated even these days from time to time. I can recall days spent recklessly engaging in whatever philosophical resource that was made available and sparring with Tony in a friendly and challenging way.

Tony and I would address a belief, tear it down, reconstruct it to gain perspective, and ultimately decide it wasn't likely a very important subject anyway. Many times Tony and I were cynical, occasionally obsessive, but nearly always goofy. To this day I am still goofy, and Tony is too, but I find solace in simplicity whereas my past self thrived upon complexity.

Complexity was a novelty, in hindsight, because I became so entrenched in my cerebral ways that I began having trouble comprehending the very simple and beautiful aspects of life: sun peaking through the clouds, dew-coated morning lawns, a stranger on a bicycle, the relief of a cold drink of water. No more. Ever since my engagement with Buddhism I've found it easier and easier to retreat to the present moment. Thich Nhat Hanh had written in one of his many Buddhist works, 'Birds are chirping outside. I hear you bird. I hear you talking to me. I am here [in the present].' He called this a mindfulness cue.

For those unfamiliar: Buddhism is rooted firmly in the present moment. Moments spent dwelling on the past or fearing for the future are wasted moments, as the only significant moment that ever happened is the present one. Truly, it does no good to allow your mind to exist elsewhere. So often we are seeking refuge in a distraction: the internet, the TV, a video game, our smart phones. I am very guilty of this. Mindfulness cues allows me to break this cyclical behavior. Though I have been indoctrinated by consumer culture and the technological ephemera ever-present, I have the ability to rescue myself from these time traps.

When I observe myself becoming sad, depressed, down, or in a funk, I can usually trace it back to a relinquishment of good, nurturing habits and an acquisition of poor habits. Perhaps I put down my books and pick up the video game controller. Or I stop running or cycling and begin languishing in the vacuous internet void. And then I remain consistently poor with my habits. Sadness takes the reigns and I am perplexed as to why. Luckily as I have aged, I've become much more adept at recognizing when bad habits are surfacing and I buffer them out with good habits. This usually begins with realigning my thoughts with the present. I do so by observing my breathing, feeling the ambient temperature of what ever environment I may be in, feeling the texture of my clothing fabric resting against my body, feeling the warmth of my beating heart. After I have inventoried all of these systems, I continue to feel that heart-warmth, and often find a smile, which seems effortless and native, curling at my lips.

This has been a very powerful tool. It is stasis on demand, and it has guided me through treacherous moments on the job as well as the perils of the mundane when I am not at work. Perhaps it may benefit others as well. You do not have to be Buddhist to enjoy the philosophical advances it has yielded to humankind. Contrarily, many Buddhists would tell you that Buddhism is not a religion in the first place - and it certainly doesn't require membership tin order to employ the lessons it teaches!

I breathe in,

I breathe out,

Only I can liberate "me",

I return to myself to be free.

Reflect deeply upon the words, and you may find relevance within them as well.

Emotional Thrust, Mindful Vector.

The resounding theme thus far in "The Genius of the Beast" by Howard Bloom is that our economy, to this point, has been driven by emotion. This is not likely to change, unless there is a profound change in human tendencies in the future. That isn't to sound fatalistic, but up until this moment, mankind has been shaped by emotion more than any other sentient function. We are not doomed by emotion, however. As a matter of fact, we are very much at the wheel of our own emotions and therefore we can actually shape our lives.

I will provide an example: you are a well regarded and powerful citizen residing in a city which has just increased the millage rate for the services it provides to the public. Many people do not like having new changes (especially financially sapping ones) imposed upon them without consent, and so you have arrived at a conclusion about this issue: anger. If this emotion is not held in check and re-evaluated, it may not be long before you are engaging your colleagues in long, grating tirades about the dubious nature of this tax increase. Inevitably you will strike the chords of some colleagues and then they, too, may share your disdain for the situation. Do you see where this leads? A single-mindedness of a collective people, for one. That is a shame, considering we are all reared into existence with the necessary tools to think for ourselves.

When you apply the above scenario over the course of months and years, the implications can become tumultuous. In baseball, once a minor league prospect is branded with the title of "poor work ethic, bad attitude" it tends to linger around for a very long time. Once this powerful emotion has been broadcast about that respective player's work ethic and attitude, it can be a difficult stigma to shake. It is unsurprising to me that this has occurred even within the objectified realm of economics and in particular, the stock market. The stock market rises and falls with the collective confidence and timidity of the buying masses - a financial and objective realm conquered by the slippery nature of emotion.

Emotion has also lead us into some very high country, however. Consider landing on the moon's surface, or the construction of vast, elaborate monuments. These are ventures which were fueled by positive emotion.

As stated, we are not powerless versus the forces of emotion. We have within us the very powerful ability of regulating and tempering our reactions. Though much of this plays into ego (another post for another day), we can at any time live as the person we fancy ourselves to be in an idealistic sense. This is very hopeful, because if you can maintain the frame of reference of this 'idealized you' in every moment then there will be virtually no difference between you and that person! We are truly the gate keepers of our emotions and therefore all of the ensuing actions following that initial, visceral emotional response. In order to gain lucidity within the emotional universe we must realize that we control the emotional thrust of our engines with some form of vector. For those who are truly focused and in the zone, it may be that we have achieved a heightened sense of mindful vector. In this state, we can calmly and collectively guide our emotional responses and seek truth and understanding before committing to a particular action. But if our vector is impulsive, it will not be very long before the initial, visceral emotional response is manifest as a powerful and communicative action.

Below is Plutchik's wheel of emotion. Robert Plutchik created this wheel in 1980 which consists of 8 basic emotions and 8 advanced emotions (each composed of two basic emotions). I believe when this chart is viewed with the context of emotional thrust, mindful vector in mind, it is easy to see how a manageable situation can spiral out of control, almost innocently.

Plutchik Wheel

A large amount of vigilance is required to maintain control of our emotional reactions. I do not implore that we become emotionless robots - far from it. I believe we can achieve a greater sense of balance and happiness by employing deliberation and neutrality when considering our emotions on a matter. Some of the very best creations forged by human hands were a result of the rapid application of emotion into reality. It is also true that some of our best artistic, literary and musical efforts have been achieved through a very careful application of emotion.

This can be a retroactive application as well. When considering your emotional responses to various matters, look at your emotional responses in years past: have you changed as a person since then? Do you feel the same about certain topics as you did 10 years ago? If you do feel the same, is this a good thing, or a bad thing, or both? (Or neither?!) This form of evaluation is helpful, so long as the present moment is not abandoned.

From this day forward things can be different: on a personal level and on a very large scale. Emotions create actions which create awareness which creates a movement which ultimately creates relative triumph or victory. Our emotions and the careful application of them can guide the collective human race and the planet it inhabits into better times - though I believe we must act sooner rather than later, and that is not just my emotions speaking.