To recap from the previous article, shift work is what we do when integrate our devotional life with daily life in a way that is beneficial to all. ‘All’ includes: you, the higher aspects of your soul, the people around you, the planet you live on and the essences above you.
A great thing about shift work is you don’t need a certificate or any PPE (personal protective equipment). It doesn’t cost money and it can be done in any language by anyone who feels urged by something for their life to have some sort of higher purpose. Shift work is finding the everyday words, at work or at home, that entice others to think about why they do what they do. The point is to understand that a lot of what we do in daily life is actually our devotional life asking for some attention, some love, to participate in your daily life.
At times shift work is difficult. Finding the shift key in order to have some peace or feel a sense of being the real you can seem endless, perhaps pointless. Especially in times of fake news what people or institutions can you trust to provide non biased instructions for the why and how of doing shift work? Put down the phone and look around you. Nature never fails. The planet never lies. The planet though, has her own dialect. One of a trajectory of development. Your soul speaks ‘trajectory’. The megaphone of the soul is your instinct. The fuel for for your instinct is belief.
That’s your work. What do you believe? Believe about: women, men, the role of a parent, planet earth, energy, the human mind, the soul trajectory. Here it is important to identify Big B and small b beliefs. a Big B belief is what you believe about men and small b belief is what you believe about you as a man. A Big B belief is what you believe about the human mind and small b belief is what you believe about your mind. These beliefs can be the threads along which we can reach up to higher realms, repeatedly, and non our own if that is the case. This brings up more questions, and more shift work:). Are my beliefs mine? Are my beliefs up to date?
Part of the shift work is to share what you feel. Sharing is a two way street. For example you offer your appreciation and amazement to planet earth for the beauty and strength that compose her grace and you are ‘graced’ by the well being energy that abounds in nature. Sharing is offering your experience and seeking the experience of others.
Shift work is doing one thing that serves both your daily and devotional life. That can be supporting your wife in what she wants which: 1. upholds your marriage and 2. energizes your sense of being a gentleman. For a man to resonate with his belief of a man and in himself as a valid expression of man is crucial. This enables a man to have an open heart and generate his emotional agility. It is up to us to feel a sense of satisfaction from participating in our family, getting things done at work, learning how to live healthy, connecting in our community (friends, sports, religion) and knowing that all of those support your daily/devotional growth.
Both daily and devotional energies are fundamental to our complex well being, growth and awareness. The devotional can easily get sidelined when daily demands are stressful and consuming. It happens all the time and it is usually because we are in the struggle of being good parents, ‘fighting’ for a decent marriage, or trying to be true to what we feel at this stage in life a man or woman.
Non one can live your life or you: Get shift done.
It’s a bamboo that is easy to grow and popular for using as hedging or screening.
The straight woody culms make good garden canes for using to support other plants and vegetables, and can be harvested for crafts projects.
Japonica / Arrow Bamboo providing protection in the winter and shade in the summer.
Pseudosasa Japonica Spread and Growing Habits
Japonica is a hardy spreading bamboo that is quick to establish itself. It can grow in a clump, or under certain conditions may be prone to spreading over a number of years.
Spreading will be more likely if the plant needs to go looking for water. For example, I have a specimen plant growing along a bank as a windbreak/hedge and it spreads further along the bank each year, most likely on the search for water and nutrients.
The opposite is true of a division of the exact same plant that is located within a woodland setting and which has remained in a tight clump with no evidence of spreading whatsoever. My mum also has three clumps of Pseudosasa japonica var. pleioblastoides that have been in place for many years and have shown no signs of running at all.
Height
Maximum height: 5 metres (16.5 ft.) but 4 metres (13 ft.) is the average.
Culm Width
Maximum diameter: 2 cm (0.8 inches).
Sheath
The pale sheaths on the lower part of mature culms are not shed unless a branch emerges and even then, the branch sheaths often do not shed.
Culms
Dark green tall and straight, the culms are useful to harvest for garden canes and crafts.
Branches
Branches emerge as single branches, often more towards the top of the culm.
Leaves
These long drooping leaves rustle in the wind and provide good cover for privacy or shelter from winter weather as a windbreak, or to provide dappled shade from the summer sun.
Leaf size can be up to a useful 30 cm by 4 cm (12 by 1 ½ inches)
Hardiness
Hardy to min. -23°C (-10°F), zone 5 to 6
This species is tolerant of semi shade or full sun.
Uses of Arrow Bamboo
This is definitely an architectural bamboo that can be shown off as a specimen plant or used for privacy hedge and windbreaks in landscaping. Pruning to a node will produce two culms growing out from one and create a dense evergreen hedge to the height you want.
As already mentioned, this commonly known as Arrow Bamboo can be used in a variety of craft projects… where do you think it got its common name 🙂
Variety
Pseudosasa japonica var. japonica
Pseudosasa japonica Tsutsumiana
Pseudosasa japonica var. pleioblastoides – a darker green variety.
Japonica is a native species originating from Japan.
ABOUT THE BAMBOO BOOTCAMP
** The Bamboo Bootcamp is a Bamboo workshop for anybody with the LOVE and Interest in Bamboo and on a mission for a sustainable ecosystem. Farmers that want to propagate, professionals who want to see its properties as a strong building material, Craftsmen who want to learn how to work with it, Enthusiasts who want to learn of its many uses, Arts & Crafts Lovers who want to learn how to use Bamboo as a medium and Entrepreneurs, LGUs and Business People who can see the opportunity for livelihood. The Bamboo Industry fulfils the 17 Sustainable Goals set forth by the UN, thus allowing participants to indulge in building a better world through Bamboo.
This story takes place in September of 2015 at a place that I call “Discovery Lake”. There are no trails to Discovery Lake, but I had bushwacked there twice before (so I thought I knew how to get there). It took me 2 full days to get to the lake. Day One was a bit […]
theconversation.com Greg Asner – September 8, 2020 Humans are dismantling and disrupting natural ecosystems around the globe and changing Earth’s climate. Over the past 50 years, actions like farming, logging, hunting, development and global commerce have caused record losses of species on land and at sea. Animals, birds and reptiles are disappearing tens to hundreds […]
Man is fast. A short man, a fat man, a bald guy, middle class, employee, entrepreneur, impatient, divorced, shy, bad breathed, fashionable, funny. They are all men. They are all fast.
How fast? Reflex fast. Faster than doubt fast.
What kind of fast? Sleight of hand fast. Love fast. At the speed of love = responding from the blood and bones of your life.
Instant yet not ignorant. Spontaneous but not fickle.
Like a leopard is dangerously fast in the jungle a fast man is emotionally capable. Capable to receive, interpret and respond with sensitivity. Sensitivity powered by the decisions he has made. Sensitivity aligned to an external purpose. The purpose can be a marriage or job or community project or his religious life.
The fast man can take some time to get up to fast speed. He has decisions to make, experiences to process, mistakes to recuperate from, self belief to re-encounter, success to follow up on, a man cave to manicure, love to share, sensitivities to develop, a purpose to adhere to, personal religion to nurture.
A Fast Man is not in a hurry even though there may be a ton of things to do. A Fast mind is not stressed but can definitely feel the pressure. In Fast mode a man has perception because the task becomes the focus.
A Fast mind is in the zone and has a sensitivity to the details and timings of the moment. Those details include respect for people and the planet. Timings can be in the project, in the moment or stage of life. In contrast, highlighting how you feel about how you feel turns a fast mind into a foggy mind. The ego is quick to grab attention and energy but it has no friends. No partnerships. Fast is in association with Slow to generate some flow that supports growth.
The book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi provides very useful context and research that describes this mental space and what can happen when we embrace it.
Everyone, man or woman, anchored in their ego, is fast to judge. Judging someone else’s response to the moment. What do we know of that other person or the moment? Whether judging or being judged, neither has anything to do with the nature of a man. Judgment has to do with the Ego. Not the best part of the Ego. What happens when a man responds according to his nature and is not restrained by his Ego? A man not limited by judgement is a man fast to offer his service. Because it makes him feel valued as a man to be of service to others. Despite his vulnerability. His vulnerability is powered by how he feels as a man. Whether he knows it or not. His vulnerability is accentuated when he cannot be a fast man when that is what is required. That pains a man greatly. To the point of boiling over into violent. At the expense of self respect and dignity for his wife.
Likewise, without a doubt if the sincere nature of a man is not appreciated, especially by those close to him, then his sense of service will come from his own need for self-respect. Meaning he will uphold what is right like the clean vigour of a man or the cleanliness of a job well done.
Problems start; and don’t stop when the fast nature of a man gets interrupted by misunderstandings, unclear relationships, money/work/stress, heavy traffic on the drive home, bad habits, fear, lack of confidence, lack of self belief. That is his challenge. To be clutch in the moment. Or even be the clutch that allows himself to change gears between fast, slow and visionary. To self elevate above his hesitation because he thinks he doesn’t know what to do. To find a way to keep going. Without damage. A stealth Satisfaction.
If he doesn’t have the ability to generate from within himself the sense of being a man when his feeling of accomplishment is delayed by life problems, then he bangs up against his limit. His limit of patience, of conversation, of listening, of acceptance, of transcendence. What happens when he is face to face with his limit: Frustration; Yelling; Quit; Blame; Solutions; Creativity; Reflection; Insults; Violence?
The fast man is he who is connected to his instinct. Perhaps he has maintained this connection since birth. Or by adherence to it at great personal social cost. Or some combination of both.
The instinct is fast. Beyond my fast and your fast. Human fast. Naturally fast. Planetary fast. Forest fast. It is known that trees communicate with each other through their roots using a fungus called mycelium. As soon as the first tree in the forest senses someone entering the territory the last tree knows it. Even if the last tree is 20 km away. That fast. Our communion with the instinct is facilitated by belief. Belief in a man.
Be that man – fast in the moment – or striving to be so.
In the chapter on Habits, Routines and Rituals we saw how champion chess player Bobby Fischer was able to rise above his own, widely known and expected, opening Routine in order to win. He made the moment more important than the past. Instead of the assumption he would start with 1e4, he opened 1c4. For me a no chess layer the change is minimal but in the chess world of the moment it was brilliant mayhem. 1e4 means moving your pawn that is in front of your queen 2 spaces forward. 1c4 is moving your pawn in front of your bishop 2 spaces forward. In the intense public spotlight and with years of the same opening move of he was still able to think for himself. He was in service to a higher master: world champion status.
And this is the challenge. In the moment of battle, be it world chess championship or an argument in your marriage or a strategic decision at work, can you address the adversarial with spontaneity. Is there a higher level of meaning or connection that you seek? This search for the way forward will lubricate your options at operational levels. Like when you give in and just agree with your wife when things get heated just to avoid a yelling match. You go beyond you …
Be Self Transcendental… It is mystical sounding terminology. Mysterious allusions to sessions wafting with incense and ensconced in chanting. What it boils down to is you getting over yourself. Getting over your low emotions about what is happening to you. Getting over your reaction to the Life Stage you are experiencing. Getting over your lack of foresight and your lack of discipline or spontaneity and self belief.
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Transcending your historyallows you to be persuaded by your instinct, so the moment flows through you, the light radiates out from you.
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The world doesn’t need your version of the hero/victim emotional pendulum. Meaning that you think your ideas are awesome yet you still feel you are still under appreciated and hard done by life. As a result you are going to usurp your conversations at work etc. as your therapy. So that when you are finished talking you feel better. Even though it can be made sense of it is not fair to conversation. Or the other person.
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The nature of conversation is therapeutic. It is the back and forth aspect of people emptying out that massages their existing and exiting feelings and ideas so they can bring in new ones. It is the give and take of talk and listen, of confirm and refine. It’s refusing to be brought down by a person or topic while resisting judging others for where they are in the moment. If we realize how to benefit from it, conversation offers transcendence.
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How do you transcend the darkness and step toward the light – by yourself and for yourself? How do you use your past and not be used by it? How do you rise above your fear, your stress, your limits, your anger and assumptions?
Awesome transcendence options include:
Seeking a connection with nature
Offering others a person on a development journey
Updating your Beliefs
Highlighting Your Best Ego
Being responsible for your High and Low Emotions
Forgive.
Mind Sprout: Transcending yesterday’s Satisfaction to get a new, different Satisfaction does not make yesterday dumb or waste of time. That is how growth works. Who knows exactly why you had to be the way you were yesterday.
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Change is not the focus. That’s doing things the hard way. . That’s the style of military basic training. Where they break down the new recruits as a means to build them back up again according to military objectives. This way those young men think they owe the military inhuman loyalty for making them a man; for providing them some sense of belonging and a purpose. Well. Those military psychologists are on the mark that the vitality generating exercises recruits perform accompanied by the camaraderie are crucial components of a healthy person. The military, ISIS among others, are abundantly aware that a young man craves direction like a heroin addict scrounging for their next high.
Juxtapose the previous with the following
Improve the connection with what is possible as opposed to breaking what made us impossible. What is possible? Us the intuitive, us the provocative and proactive, us the inspired, the spontaneous.
Please Remember
1. You have ways, many ways to elevate into the person you want to be; the person your soul knows you to be.
2. In a moment of reflection … imagine … there you are, on the balcony, cupping, smelling your hot coffee, as the morning is in the throes of dawn. You feel that you have the embers of vitality, animated with your breath to fuel the flames of curiosity. You radiate the magnetism of belonging so others are intrigued by you. Your sense of direction nurtures others much like the forest canopy provides cover to the new growth in the forest floor.
Challengein Nature: Walk slow. Walk differently. Our gait gets set when we are young. It is amazing how difficult it can be to be conscious of our gait and walk differently than we normally do. Go to the park or back yard and if possible take your shoes off – check for dog poo first!:) Nature will join you on your little barefoot journey. Walk slow, walk differently. Try to walk a bit more on your toes, or roll your feet a bit more. Give it time today, or another day. The work is to be aware of you being different while actually remaining loyal to who you are. Sounds weird. So get out there!
Take the time and know it is valid to find or create your ways to elevate into the you of now, the you of vigour, vision and vitality.
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UPDATE YOUR BELIEFS
It’s ok if you don’t really know what you are doing. It’s ok if you do. It’s ok if you know what you stand for. What do you stand for? You stand for something you understand. You stand for a principle you uphold. You stand for your marriage being real, alive, supportive of the man’s journey into the unknown.
Share a bit of your vulnerability about you morphing over time into a different, newer you. To share your desire to grow. To transcend your education, your era, your ancestors.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) emerged out of India coming to the west in the 60’s. TM is a technique for avoiding distracting thoughts and promoting a state of relaxed awareness. The late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi derived TM from the ancient Vedic tradition of India. He brought the technique to the U.S. in the 1960s.
One way to think about TM was that it took out the poses out of yoga and left you with breathing and mental imaging.
Breathing can aid you in transcending the many stresses of life. Mental imaging is activated to focus your energy on the growing side of stress. From the positive side of stress declare your beliefs. The debilitating side of stress we probably all know well.
Satisfaction is related to and impacted by stress, change, challenge, failure, growth, different, new, dread, negativity, unknown, lies, poor eldership by ancestors. This range of stress will highlight both your strengths and weaknesses that naturally are revealed by each Life Stage.
One of the messages of Jesus could be categorized as ‘be transcendental about yourself’.
In other words; Get over yourself.
Instead of the tyranny of your feelings, make something else the first consideration in the process of understanding. That ‘something else’ is what you stand for.
Get over what your Ego is screaming at you and strain to hear the nuances of Your Best Ego.
Your Ego is like industrial farming – based on numbers and not vitamins, succumbing to shareholders and not natural planetary processes, satisfying the fertilizer salesperson and not your instinct.
Your Best Ego is like organic farming – that can let land fallow because it is not addicted to now/profits/expansion but rather on a journey of learning and growing. There is variety and companion planting.
Self Transcendental is catching up with your Life Trajectory. Your Life Trajectory is inclusive of Your Best Ego and understanding of the Male Stack and Female Frixion. Low emotional baggage is filtered out. Your low emotional baggage will accompany you at the expense of learning and growing and sharing. That’s a hefty baggage fee.
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Humility = Humanity = Humility
Self Transcendental is in the moment. A moment shared with inner and outer lives:
Inner lives of Peace, Satisfaction, Belief, Connection, Vision.
Outer Lives of accomplishment, belonging, service, happiness, challenge, growth.
Transcendence is a bridge. A bridging.
It relieves us of our downward facing habits like: judgement, grudges, comparison, negativity, excuses, jealousy, ______________, _____________.
These misdirected habits, like judgement, are Minimizing Marauders. They minimize you. Minimize your abilities. Minimizes the female instinct. Minimize the opportunity that offers itself in the moment. They reduce the value of your willingness to love and be loved. They suction out your Belief in Marriage. They make you good at being mentally critical of your wife for being a woman. They are nasty.
Picture that in your unconscious urge to transcend these Minimizing agents of nastiness fall like coins from your pocket. As you cross the bridge of transcendence into the New You these coins fall from your grasp. They tumble through the wood planks of the swinging suspension bridge. You can either grab the railing for stability and stay standing as the coins fall into the deep, narrow, cold river with a minute splash – gone – as you move forward feeling the wisps of clean mist rising from below. Or you can try and grasp those falling coins (agents of nastiness) prostrating to money on the planks of the bridge clutching a few coins, not having taken the step to step into today.
Your activated Vision is vital so you can see in your mind what you want to become. That’s why your Updated Beliefs are beautiful fuel so you can feel in your blood the man you are in the moment. Transcend the excuses and ridicule, the mistakes and regret. Your Satisfaction Skills are so much stronger than immature ridicule . Satisfaction Skills include: getting stuff done, knowing how to delegate, being an awesome teacher, _______________________, ______________________, __________________.
Transcendence causes change. Change can make us feel vulnerable. Change can be mislabeled and vilified by Ego based fear subscribing leeches. Don’t listen to them. Transcendence is a process to the New You. The New You will be received, loved and accepted just like the old you was received. The thing is the old you had a best-before-date of yesterday and the New You has a best-before-date of tomorrow. It’s a constant flow that uses your Inner Lives … to be you in the moment. The moment will renew and so will you. The New You emits constancy of Peace, Belief, Connection, Vision and Satisfaction.
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Forgive:
Gravitate to the love. To let go of the old. Your former you doesn’t give you as good results as the new, as the now. In comparison the old you is stale, inflexible, brittle, musty and rusty. The task at hand is to harvest the residue of human qualities from your past experiences that now reside in your inner Life. Your past is valid and necessary as part of your foundation for growth of your version of a man.
Why? To offer to your spouse the real you, you of the moment with all your constant qualities and a history of success [???]
How? Breathe, smile, straighten your posture, laugh, share. Understand that we do things because of the power of the Life Stage we are living working through our Ego working towards My Best Ego.
Breathe …
Count in – 1,2,3 (deeper breath) …….4..5..6 (breathe into your pelvis) …….7…8…9…… Let the old yield to history and the new reveal you.
The thing is the more we focus on the need to forgive, the process of forgiveness, what we need to forgive in ourselves and others we are submerging ourselves in yesterday. Making the past the focus. We are walking backwards while trying to get on the bus to the future. That can make a lot of unnecessary work for others. Others need to know that they are forgiven or we forgive ourselves without reliving the whole incident. It’s painful to poke old scars and opens healed wounds. A more fruitful focus is what we learned about ourselves, others, doing stupid things and how life stages can make something seem vital to us in the moment. Exhibit that you have learned by what you do. Let them hear it in your decision making. Let them see it in your eyes when you ask a question then shut up to listen.
Elevate. Find a reason for what you do. Adhere to that reason. A reason higher, greater than you reveals another aspect of you that is beautifully simple while being enigmatically you. A powerful reason is to be immortal. It was born before you and continues after you are gone. Over the first 18-20 years of life we are being repeatedly handed the baton of self-responsibility. The beliefs and values of those who nurtured us often become ours through osmosis. Updating them makes them yours. And that actually makes our parents so proud, when we take the family baton from them and do better than they did in their day. We carry their admirable qualities of humility, companionship, support, agility, constancy as our inheritance. At the same time we elevate above their downward facing habits, failures and arrogance before their instinct. Elevate above the Ego of the moment letting yourself be pulled up into perception by your reason for action and your desire to see it made real. This power fuels your service.
Service.
Service takes so many forms and expressions. We all know what it means because we have been put into a situation of service having raised children, helped siblings and cared for aging parents.
Parenting is a service industry that we signed up for with no pay but lots of incredibly rewarding moments, feedback, suggestions, arguments, disappointments, complaints and challenges to the ego that are answered with growth. Being a spouse is the same.
None of these service roles include violence. They do include communicating to generate understanding. That’s what this book is about – creating your own avenues of communication, expression, stress relief and Satisfaction. It’s about the you that is emotionally agile enough to offer your spouse support for her Fulfillment without the threat, hint or image of violence: sexual, physical, emotional, psychological using money, guilt or force.
We need to find something in the marriage or realize something about our wife to be of service to. For many reasons. Help others who need help. Service offers our qualities towards making things better. We get Satisfaction of being valued. At the end of the day we are not wanting for Satisfaction and so offer our wife a man that is: peaceful, cooperative and warm.
Service can be: coaching, volunteering to talk with elders or pick up windswept coffee cups in the park or accompany a blind person or cook at a homeless shelter.
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Perception.
Let’s say perception is you thinking outside the box ( the box that men put themselves in); You tapping The New You on the shoulder and asking for advice. It is almost for certain that your life is framed by societal understanding of you as a man. However the misunderstanding of the abilities of a man, especially in relation to a woman, is rampant. This vacuum of value for a man’s nature is not limited to any culture or race or socio-econimic class. We all underestimate the man that you are. It is the man that you have become that won’t let us talk to the real you – the New You. The New You loves perception. The man you actually are responds to the human instinct.
How do we meet this fabulous guy? This perceptive, instinctual dude? How will I recognize him if he is new …?
This seems to be a major reason for using psychedelics. Get past the conscious brain so your creativity creek can tribute into the flow of the river of innovation. Psychedelics, nowadays being used in micro-doses can do the heavy lifting of leapfrogging our mental pathways, negative or creative, to perception, to germinate innovation, enlightenment, possibly forgiveness.
There is a resurgence of psychedelics in behavioural research and bio-hacking.
Some famous and effective bio-hacking personalities are Tim Ferris https://tim.blog, Dave Asprey the Bulltetproof coffee guy https://blog.daveasprey.com/about-dave-asprey/. They are excellent sources of information as a result of using their bodies as guinea pigs, their minds as test tubes, their lives as laboratories. Doing whatever it takes; eating, climbing, swimming, fasting to increase the yield of your body and brain. The guys who do this are bright and brave and I am not going to follow their path.
I would say we are in constant reception of soul micro dosing.
David Bryce Yaden PhD. John Hopkins University is doing great research into what might be termed ‘soul hacking’. That would be another way of talking about the personal religious quest. A study of the Devotional and the daily life in cultures. The book is for academics but the search is for all of us.
If we eschew psychedelics there is a buffet of drugs on the market be that coffee, alcohol, delusion, love, work, money, success, sex and more. It is likely that most if not all the things on this list of activities are not as effective to deliver perception. Perception in this case being about The New You. Who is this New You?! New Me?!
This is a guy that already exists. It is a guy that makes you look good, look smart, on the ball. This guy is fast! Fast at knowing how to join in or to go it alone.
He has the sensitivity to get Satisfaction and let Fulfillment happen.
He uses the past and isn’t used by it.
He isn’t scared of the moment because he has no need to control it. The moment is free and so is he. Free to accept a compliment. Free to stop, smile and tell his wife she smells great.
Willing to see he has changed as he is processed through the succession of life stages. Realizing that his spouse will be similarly changed and it is his task to update himself with her growth. Admire her belief in moving the marriage forward that requires the best of you.
Leverage the future of the New You in negotiation with the Old You.
When I was ten years old I took my first communion. Because I went to public elementary school I had to take catechism classes once a week at night at the Catholic school. The Catholic school kids had their own mass for their first communion and then our public school group had ours a few Sundays later. It was a spring day with a beautiful blue sky full of potential activity. My parents made me wear a mustard yellow ascot to go with my burnt orange velvet blazer -the one with my dried snot on the right sleeve where I had wiped my nose which made my mom so mad. She was right. It really was a cool blazer. It definitely wasn’t a blue suit.
I can picture the photo of us outside on the church steps afterwards as we posed for the portrait of the moment. My mom was shining her beautiful smile as always. My dad was in full 1970’s style with the big tie and bigger sideburns. Grandma, my dad’s mom, was there in a nice baby blue dress. She was of the era, born before 1900, when you didn’t smile for photos. She definitely didn’t break rank that day.
I got paired with a girl from our catechism class to take the Communion offering and collection up to the altar. She got the money. I took the Bread of Transcendence.
I was really nervous as we walked up the aisle. It was my first time. There was nothing I was repeating. No Habit to tyrannize me; no Routine to coach me. The girl and I and everyone at mass were participating in a Ritual. Called Communion. This Communion ritual is the act of elevating the Daily version of ourselves to experience the Devotional one. A communion of Daily and Devotional.
Priests, parents, teachers and Elders are understood to instruct the young on the arts and skills of releasing the Devotional into the Daily. That means the religious service connects the participants with higher energy – Devotional; and young people need help to walk the talk of this life wisdom. Actually we all need guidance to process the impression of formal religion on our mind and soul so we can create habits that amount to a personal religion. It might feel easier to release an elephant from the local zoo into your city centre than to step into your personal religion.
Ritual abounds in religion, in sports, in art, in making tea, in meditation, in martial arts, in connecting with nature, in nature. Ritual is high intention combined with mental focus and followed through with an action that attracts confirmation from the higher purpose of those doing the ritual. The Ritual is a vehicle for the person to accumulate in their blood and bones the residue of higher forces. The sound, movements, words, songs, dances are in support of this human – energy connection. If we lose sight of this then what was supposed to be ritual becomes tradition.
This topic is important because all men are constantly receiving real energy to grow as a male, man and gentleman. The confusion is while some guys seem to be able to manage their energy without getting into too much trouble, why do some men use the energy they receive to disrespect women through violence and other forms of aggression?
The energy that powers a man is powerful. If we suffer from an inability to give this power expression then we might: feel agitated, lack confidence, get crushed by depression. And some of us get violent. The violence can be swinging fists, hurling insults, sexual perversion to name a few of the many forms. Instead what can be really useful for young men is to learn their unique energy management. The violence against a woman can happen in a brief, horrible moment. But the frustration of a lack of self understanding in a man builds up in him over years. Bomb like. They can explode in a fit of violence, be detonated by a psychologist or be dismantled by the man himself.
That is why it is crucial to develop Habits, create Routine and be ready for Ritual.
We are all allowed to get frustrated and talk about it. Get angry about the frustration. Anger doesn’t imply aggressive words or threatening stances or personal insults. There is no blame. A man is responsible for his energy management. That is something he needs help with. Something he needs to learn and refine all life long. So when we have an argument with our wife there is no violence because we don’t have pent up energy. Instead we have some sense of momentary Satisfaction. Generated by Habits of cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen, checking your sports scores; Routines of taking the dog for her walk, of seeing your buddies in the weekend; Rituals of eating dinner together, of pursuing your personal religion. That way we have avenues of expression for our energy. Because the frustration or disrespect or stress you bang up against in daily life is handled by a foundation of Habit, Routine and Ritual.
There are lots of variations of energy in men including: sexual energy, Devotional energy where one is caused to look for meaning and a higher purpose, the energy that goes with their Life Stage, marriage energy and male energy to list a few. It is good to recognize there is a lot going on all at the same time. We all need help. Conversation. It is our role as a man to grasp the natural influences in our life and do something about them. Your energy and how you react or respond to it actually has nothing to do with your wife or girlfriend.
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A quick word about sexual energy. The human sexual energy is very strong. It is not bad nor is it well understood. It is not just sex. Physical sex. It is a range of creative powers that can result in a new business, a new relationship, a new recipe or even a new baby. You see teenagers and some young adults, even some famous adults, who can’t think about anything else. It makes their decisions for them. It runs their life. Their inability to resist it or manage it ruins their life. For a pubescent teenager this makes sense it almost consumes their life because the connection with this energy is itself always new, so intense in the moment and powerful in its impact.
Poor sexual energy management can have harming repercussions that cut deep and last years. In marriage, family, society and men in general we generally make it difficult to talk about and direct this power. The youth need guidance from elders like mom and dad. And they need to do stuff that uses up the energy. This is a huge challenge. How do you use up the undeniable sexual energy running through the bodies of young people without it being physical sex? Think sports, guitar lessons, dancing, hanging out, parties, fixing up your bike, fixing up your car, cleaning your room!, hiking, swimming, help them get a part time job, volunteering, anything and everything, … Keep thinking and doing and talking and guiding.
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When a man is beyond the reach of his elders because he won’t listen to them, they aren’t worth listening to or he has simply outgrown them in his case – how does he know when and how to use the natural sexual energy? Hopefully throughout this book there are ideas and inspirations that generate avenues of investigation and belief that help in this aspect.
Please remember that sexual energy and your Devotional energy are not the same thing and should never be confused. Both can have an aspect of attraction/calling, companionship, loving and being loved, connection and an impulse for meaning that drives you to do things you wouldn’t do yourself. But they are not the same. Those in positions of power that they wield to confuse others about these two natural energies are misusing their power. The priests of the Catholic church has a lot of damaging experience in this territory.
This book is written to create some distance between all men and this confusion of sexual/devotional energy mentioned above. We urgently need passion and ideas and people to clarify a man’s path forward and specifically highlight the unique man they may see before themselves.
It is vital to grasp that this is a daily challenge for a man. The challenge of finding his path forward using his unique abilities to synthesize the task at hand into daily life in a satisfaction producing way. This urge upon him for self-realization is non stop. At times subtle. At times shouting. At times a beautiful congress in the moment of life trajectory and courage. At times a complete mess of what he wants in contrast to what he is doing and what he thinks he should do. Some guys can wake up and even before they open their eyes they are already depressed! And others wake up without an alarm at 4:30 am everyday to: work out, meditate, write, make breakfast and then get to work by 6:30?
Habits can categorize a man’s energy. Routines can process it. Rituals can reveal it.
You can’t talk about Habits without mentioning Routine. With a mention of routine then the next logical step is to see the where and when of Ritual. If it this isn’t your experience then you need to create the circumstance and meet the people and ask yourself the questions to generate your own purpose. In the moment that can make us vulnerable to not know the way forward and ask for directions. And it can also can take us to new places and introduce us to the New You.
Stanford University psychology professor BJ Fogg has a good grasp on the aspect of habit as a way to improve daily life. He has been looking into the topic for many years and has many anecdotes to share in his book Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. He is practical in finding how to side step self sabotage on the journey of growth. It is annoying for those of us who think we are maximizing our time and producing based on our work habits. Take a look.
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It’s all in your head. And it is also in your blood and bones. A few connections to ponder:
Ritual – Projection – Energy – Beliefs
Routine – Imagination – Power – Prayer
Habit – Location – Strength – Declaration
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Tradition can be reduced to a routine, converted into a ritual minimized, squeezed into a habit. Or you can build your own traditions that have the power of Habit, the reliability of routine and the Attractive energy of Ritual.
For guys to hear mention of the word ritual they can go down four different mental paths.
1 .Ritual to mean religious ritual that is something you do in a temple/house of worship and it has always been like that, you unconsciously repeat a few prayers and you are done. Whether there has been a transformative process is another question;
2. New Age flaky ritual based in ancient traditions with everyone bearfoot, wearing white and chaniting themselves into a trance. Perhaps the greatest difference between these first two types of rituals is that the New Age one is probably more effective at delivering on the concept of a transformation.
3. The ritual display that guys know is in sports: The goalie goes onto the ice first. Or the quarterback puts eye black under his eyes (TB12) because that’s what he always does to get him to his peak performance.
4. The ritual well known through the animal world: mating. This ritual can take place at any hour in any place. Popular mating ritual temples are bars on Friday night. However increasingly the ritual has gone online. The ritual nowadays amounts to swiping right. Dating apps and websites made famous by Tinder.
It just came out on Netflix. Sandra Bullock leads a group of women on an intricately planned jewelry heist. It’s a fun movie. At one point they use a 3-D printer to reproduce a famous statue in miniature. Amazing!
We’ve seen this before.
Technological developments like the invention of the car, the phone, the computer. These inventions are a life disruption whether that be good or bad. Whether it brings us money or surrounds us with charlatans.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) has arrived and is gaining a ton of momentum. In part because many of the innovations are useful for people. 3-D printers can manufacture human organs apparently! Just last year a human heart was printed. And then there are the results in money saving efficiency for companies. Investors are always looking for the next big thing to throw lots of money at so that creates lots of buzz.
A simplified definition of AI in one word is: resources. AI is powered by algorithms. Algorithms are written by people and then evolve to become self regulating. Algorithms can learn to teach themselves to get better at getting resources. These resources are called data. So AI is powered by algorithms that eat data for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This has become known as Big Data. It is huge!
So big in fact companies like Facebook etc. need massive data centres to store and manage all the info about you and your neighbours shopping habits. These data centres need lots of energy to keep from over heating. AI is useful but there is definitely a behind the scenes cost the planet is paying for our need to keep our data cool.
Speaking of algorithms there is one that has been around since before Amazon, before Facebook, before hotels.com.
Redcharlie on Unsplash
And you are it’s data
Center:)
Your soul.
Your soul needs you. Your habits, routines and rituals. The more you can refine these three resource management processes the more you are synthesizing your soul with your life. The more you can resist the big data shareholder mentality.
Facebook is a monster. A many tentacled beast that gorges on ‘likes’ and boredom.
Get a life. A Soul life. A higher soul life.
Read a book. Yes! You can order it on Amazon. Orrrr, you can get it from the library. Borrowing books from friends is a good way to have a problem:)
Or to generate your soul life connect with nature – plant some veggies, share a walk in the park, hike in the forest, go barefoot, …. breathe….
The planet is the mother of all AI – AuthenticIntelligence – nothing artificial there.
The Wild Coach 