I just had a strange experience. Oh yeah, it's Wednesday. I have strange experiences every Wednesday. And Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Monday is my day of rest. One a strangeness scale, this wasn't above a five-point-three.
I lost my wallet a couple days ago. If you've never done that before, it's a rotten feeling. You know you can replace your ATM card and your ID, and if you're me there certainly wasn't much money in it, but still.
I have ADD. I lose my wallet two or three times a week, about half as often as I lose my keys. And 99.999% less often than I lose slips of paper with important messages or phone numbers on them. Thank God for multitasking cellphones. (I'd lose my cellphone, but I can always dial it and listen for the ringtone). My belt, my pants, my glasses...please. Don't go there.
Most of the time it ends up just being a severe case of CFE (Can't Find 'Em), resulting in nothing worse than being late (or having to start early), driving to work without your ID, or using a spare key (or all of the above), none of which solves the problem of course because you want YOUR wallet, YOUR keys and it bugs the shit out of you that you have absolutely no idea where you left them. But you drive and you keep spare keys hidden and you wear the jeans with the stain on the knee because people with ADD develop coping mechanisms, always have a plan B, and after all it's not rabies for chrissake.
Why don't I always put it in the same place? I don't know. I don't! If it was that simple I wouldn't be writing this My brain doesn't work that way. I don't walk in and say, where will I hide my wallet today? What happens is I look for my wallet, slap my head and say, I did it again! I can't friggin believe it! That's how it works every time. I'm not complaining It's a pretty good brain, mostly. Got a couple hitches in its getalong, is all. Sometimes I will remember where I left my wallet or my keys (or my glasses or....) More often I can figure out where I probably left it, and usually get it right. Lately -say the last six months to a year - I've discovered that when I simply relax and cast my mind out, I can use a sort of dowsing process that sometimes works. That's pretty cool, actually, and I'm getting better at it. But this time, my wallet was gone. I could feel it...or rather I couldn't feel it. Whatever.
Yesterday we threw out some old clothes. I actually climbed through the dumpster, looking. I have just been in bed most of the time for five days with the flu, and I had absolutely no recollection of what I did between coming home from work feeling lousy and going to bed buck nekkid. The keys turned up. Need 'em to get in and out of the building. The cell phone was right there. Didn't need my wallet, didn't think about it. For days. When I did, it was gone.
It's like finding some important part of your life out of phase. It's a temporary thing but at the same time it is a major brain fart and when it happens to you all the time, you find ways of dealing with it, and I've tried them all. I do know something that works well for me, and I was out of that particular resource at the time. There's always a plan B, so to speak. I tried my dowsing or scrying - this time I actually didn't use the stone - and three times I intuited that my wallet was in my car. Which I knew was impossible because it doesn't leave my pocket under ordinary circumstances unless a guy with mirror sunglasses and a gun is looking in my window, and because I never, ever, leave my wallet in my car. Ever. Nevertheless, three times I went out and searched my car. Glove box. Under the seats. Door pocket. Center console. And when I got back inside, it was the same old feeling: not here. Not in here.
Losing your wallet. Not the end of the world, but it definitely sucks. On the suckiness scale it's a solid six-pointer.
Long story a little shorter: I found my wallet this morning. In my car. Under a piece of paper - actually it was an envelope - on the floor. Which is when the strange part happened. Because I wasn't surprised. I was happy, of course. It was right where I knew it was. How did it get there? I can reconstruct events - yes, I see what happened. I went to the bank and deposited my check on my way home. I used the drive-up, had to take out my wallet. I went home. I had a fever. It's all a blur. Why didn't I find it the first, second or third time I looked? I don't know. That's how my brain works - or doesn't work. Whatever. What I experienced was simply that life instantly snapped back into phase. Not a WOW! moment. Just a Right then! Carry On! The reason my wallet wasn't in the most likely place for me to have left it, the next-most, any of the five, twenty, hundred next-mostly likely was that I slipped out of phase in my own timeline because I was sick.
I don't happen to think it's a disease - the attention-thing, not the flu. Or a disorder, or a condition that needs treatment beyond a recognition that we all process information differently. Which is exactly what our educational system is geared to NOT do. In any event, I have lived with this for a lifetime. I've taken meds, and I've had counseling. All of which can be useful, especially if the goal is to become something other than what you are. Which I can see under certain circumstances, like like being a mastermind of an evil cabal. Or even hearing voices telling you to ax your mom or bomb some poor people who never wished you any harm. Sure, I get it. In a way, that's what our culture is about: if you don't like yourself, we now have the technology to change you. Make you better. Less hair, more hair, whatever. You'll love the new you.
Most people who experience ADD/ADHD above a certain age are either undiagnosed (I should be so lucky) or use various methods - chemical or other - to control what is, above all, a matter of staying focused on the present.
A long time ago and for very good reasons, I stopped taking medication. All medication. For anything. I decided to use only nonprescription, natural, earth-provided resources for colds, allergies, COPD, carpal tunnel syndrome, my heart, my life. It has worked. Along the way, besides losing 75 pounds, finding myself able to do Marine-style pushups for the first(!) time in my life, losing age spots, having my eyesight improve and my libido regaining its balance, I've learned to appreciate so-called ADD in a whole new way.
First of all, it isn't Attention-Deficit DISORDER, unless what you mean by a disorder is anything that assists you in transcending the more confining aspects of present reality. It's a focus thing, and what happens is that you find yourself really focused on something while running on autopilot. There's nothing wrong with autopilot. It's what give the captain the chance to take a leak and eat a sandwich. People need their inner autopilot. Trouble is, too many folks spend far too much time on autopilot. ADD/ADHD "victims" experience it in short, intense bursts. We're out-of-phase with the pilot who spends his time strolling through the cockpit. And we go in and out of phase with ourselves sometimes, too.
Before I understood as much as I do now, I would describe being inside my head as like being in a room with about five radios you can't turn off. And all of them have something interesting and worth listening to. You control the volume by moving around the room, closer to some radios and farther from others. But you can always hear all of them. Ask your kid. He'll know what I mean.
The other main manifestation of ADD/ADHD is the restless mind - often becoming the restless kid. It drives the teachers crazy. The restless mind is difficult to capture. Especially if it left you behind just past the gate. And kids need to run! So much easier to use drugs.
I think the restless mind is the mind that saves the clan, not from tonight's beasties but from the coming drought. The restless spirit is the one that visits the far side of the mountain. The questing soul knows the wind because they ride together. Listen up, Indigos! The restless mind knows what it knows, and doesn't always mind being the only one who knows it. Say that five times fast.
The lesson of ADD is: you can learn to not just turn the radios up and down, off and on. You can make them turn colors and grow noses. They're just telling you what you are. What you already know. I can't speak for anyone else. It took me about half a century to catch on.
I think that ADD, the scourge of our kids and a gold mine for the PTB, is a manifestation of something that has a vital function a) in the past when it promoted survival by providing value to the group, or b) the the present and beyond, where it will promote evolution. Hell, it may BE evolution, I don't know. But it isn't a disease, and we shouldn't be drugging our kids. We should be teaching them to dowse for their wallets.
Now if I could just find that little wallet my cell phone goes in...
8-D
Oh yeah...who was it who asked what 8-D means to me? I forget (LOL!) Actually I think you're just the second person to ask me that, the first in years. Well, it's just a face. You know the typical type-o-smile... a colon, and dash and a close-parense :-) It's eyes, a nose and a smile, when you tilt your beam to the portside. Put in glasses and a Big grin...and you get 8-D
The first person who asked me pointed out that it was the symbol of infinity connected to my initial. I think that's a whole lot cooler than my idea, but I can't claim it as mine.
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I bet you even say that to all the guys who don't go back and correct their grammar and syntax ;-)
Yeah, I keep forgetting about that 8-D stuff, the eight dimensions and all that. Really, I do. You might be onto something. Because one thing I have learned over and over is that every new step in knowledge explains something about me/us that I didn't really get before. Sure, some confirmed what I knew or thought I did, but others have swept away clouds of doubt and mystery, not just about myself but about the Universe. It's like being at the heart of an onion and growing as its layers become transparent and merge with you, and each time you are finding out more about All That Is. I read somewhere that the onion was sacred to the Egyptians for this very reason. The Sacred Onion is infinite, which means the Center, the Heart is everywhere as it is nowhere. It's where you are and it's where I am, and it's the Same Onion. Oh hell, that's so 8D I don't even understand it!
Keeping life simple is definitely key. Harder to do in the city, but possible. I also don't own a car anymore. I do drive my wife's now and then but I also bicycle and ride public transportation which is relaxing and pleasant - and a big boon if folks would just use it.
I do know the joyful focus or focused joy of which you speak. The absolute best moments of absolute, transcendent, soaring joy in my life have been during retreats to the desert where I was alone or with one or two people who were there for similar reasons. The only exception to that is recognition of my soulmate, who really exists and is now my wife.
I used to present as a sort of(!) joke a two-word definition of each of the world's religions. The first word was always Sacred. The second word was the punch line. Zen was Sacred Absurdity. I like Zen.
8-D
8-D
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I don't know how you can possibly forget that one!
Got that right! I absolutely love it, and they haven't even made the movie.
A few years ago, I would have thought that was pure blarney, but nowadays, when I think about it, it makes perfect sense somehow.
Right again. It makes perfect sense, as much as anything. I don't think it's our prime reality - but one thing I've learned is that if we can wrap our minds around it in any way, it's real, alright. In some way, at some level, for someone. That goes along with learning that there are plenty of things we can't wrap our minds around that are at least as real as we are.
really glad you found your soulmate. Would that we all had! The rest of us have just had to learn to love the ones we're with. It's been my goal all along to find mine, but I think I am going to have to wait until my next lifetime.
I know. I do. My expectations along those lines were absolute zero. A wistful dream, long ago trashed like a childhood treasure. I chased her away too, as hard as I could. Go figure. Remember the man in painting 17 at the WM site? I know that guy.
Do we all even have soulmates? I think so, maybe even thousands. And among them, there is One. That Sacred Integer is seeking you as you seek it - no, not he or she, although that will be the form, one or the other, in which we understand the meeting shall take place. How do I know? I can wrap my mind around it, and my heart too. Wrap them around it? I can pour them into it! The trouble is finding them in 3D or even 4D...they may not even fully occupy a single body, let alone occupy one in our timeline. Yet that is their intention - our intention - because somehow we know that there exists an affirmation of who we are and where we are in "real" reality - and that in it we are not even close to being alone, not ever. I don't think it's always typical love. Nafetah is not the first person, male or female, in whom I/we have recognized an immediate affinity: Hey! I KNOW You.
Kaye (Nafetah is the name everyone online knows her by) is the one, the other ship in the night, whose soul and mine met across the waters and both said: Holy crap! it's YOU! You do exist! Twenty years ago, those ships would have passed with barely a toot or the wave of a flag. Funny how things happen at the right time, not necessarily according to us beforehand, but after. As a marriage, it's been a better-than-normal one: up and down (mostly up), challenging, expanding, worth every nanosecond and occasionally tempting to storm out of. NOT.
And oh yeah, the Sacred Onion thing...I don't know if the Egyptians held onions sacred or not. I know I read they did, somewhere. Sometimes I can contemplate realities in 3D or better. I was holding in my mind once how the earth is like an orange, and so is a tree. Put another way, there are many things about trees and other plants that teach me that they are spiritual entities, and one day I saw how the curving forms of the tree form a torus, which is the shape of a magnetic field as well as the form of an orange inside its skin. What proceeded then to enter my understanding was an entirely novel picture, one I knew to be equally true (if true is the right word) - that of the Sacred Onion. It's all an illusion, and it's all real: both are true statements.
8-D