Category: Inspiration

A Shortage of Miracles

oscarthegrouchNow I am not talking about the kinds of miracles where someone finds the image of the Virgin Mary in paint chips or peanut shells.  I once saw a very clear image of Scooby Doo in a pancake–and Oscar the Grouch in ivy–so I am just saying.

I am also not talking about the kind of “miracle” where a Tornado wipes out a whole town but spares the daycare center.

The former can be accounted for by society-wide psychosis—not really any different than seeing animate and inanimate objects in clouds or Rorschach tests.

The later can be explained by science.  Plus the idea discounts the rest of the town that was not spared.  Was that an “unmiracle?”

I am talking more about the kinds of miracles that account for the never ending willingness of human beings to engage in long term relationships with other human beings.

We do this in spite of the overwhelming evidence of the folly of such endeavors.

The rewards of such relationships, far out weight the fact that the hottie you could not stop having sex with 24/7–turns into the person you become “willing” to have change your diaper, or you theirs.

These long term relationships also reveal evidence of what could either be nothing more than a reflection of cosmic design, or that the universe has a sense of humor.  We get to discover that by the time you want to make love to someone as old as your grandmother, you are yourself as old as your grandfather.

The “unspoken” willingness to immerse yourself in the life of another human being, knowing full well that that person might be run over tomorrow by the proverbial  bus–or “kick you to the curb” for your sister, brother or best friend next week–is to me truly a miracle of immense proportions.

We are of course talking about “love.”

When love lasts–it is because it “matures.”

The interesting paradox about love is that we must know that “ultimately” it does not last forever, yet we must live our lives as if it does.

Now THAT is a miracle!

By Charles Buell

Using 10% of your brain—how to boost it to 12% while you sleep!

Like most of my generation, I grew up under the assumption that we only use 10% of our brains. Early on, I was determined to be the first person on the planet to use more than 10%. I figured that if I could make that happen, I could be such a contribution to humanity.

10% of me
10% of me

Not only have I discovered, now that I am older, that it is highly unlikely that I am going to accomplish my goal I have to deal with the fact that all humans use 100% of their brain pretty much 100% of the time.

These are very painful realizations!

The fact that it never occurred to most people just how ludicrous the notion that we only use 10% of our brains is, proves that we just plain have no clue how to use it. It should have been my first hint that it would not be possible for me to be that first exception.

Our brains are like cars with the drive axle blocked up so the wheels are not touching the ground. We then fully expect the car to go somewhere. It sits there working 100% or more and going nowhere.

Back when I thought we used only 10% of our brains, I saw incredible opportunity for humanity to actually pull itself out of its quest for extinction. Now I realize how much more complicated and difficult it actually is going to be.

So now it becomes a matter of figuring out why people SEEM to under-utilize they brains. It turns out that it has more to do with genetics, what we feed it, blood circulation and other factors that make some people seem smarter than others.

Another thing that plagues human brains is the fact that there appears to be little relationship between being smart and doing what is right. I always dreamed that one’s moral compass was somehow integrated with how smart we are. However, we see very smart people slide off the deep end all the time that have IQ’s that make mine look like the desired indoor air temperature.

I now find it incredibly distressing that I have been using my brain 100% of the time!

I think perhaps I need a Twinkie to get things going in the right direction.

 

Charles Buell

Reflections

It is easy to feel separate from the things around us—from other people–from the whole world.  It takes a lot of work and courage to see how interconnected everything is.  There is even a worldwide movement that reflectingsees the earth as a superorganism where humans are but a part of the whole organism–some might argue that our involvement is more like a cancer by the way we act at times.

The total degree to just how interconnected we all are may be outside the grasp of the mind’s current state of evolution.  Add to that the various pressures to deny interconnectedness and some people can live their whole lives in desperation.

Every day science informs us as to how one thing impacts another in some way we never realized.  It is not a new concept; we have known a long time about the consequences of how pissing upstream becomes someone’s drinking water downstream.

When we look in a mirror it is pretty easy to see ourselves reflected in something else–the mirror.  It is also true that a door reflects our image–we just can’t see it–perhaps a shadow, if the light is just right.  The door nonetheless sees us.  While these are most likely only metaphors of connectedness, we truly are made up of the elements of the earth and these elements do end up back there–they never left actually.

For some reason we don’t like to think of ourselves being interconnected because we might be required to see ourselves becoming food for something else–as we return to dust.

For me I would find it more disappointing to discover that we aren’t somehow all interconnected–however much we might act that way at times.

Charles Buell