Martha Beck's "10 Rules I've Unlearned"

I enjoy Martha Beck's columns in the O Magazine. Common sense straight talk with a dash of gentle - just my style.
This month, her column includes the 10 things she's glad she's UNlearned!
Go to page 70 of the May 2010 edition of O Magazine for the full list - these are the ones I resonate with today...

1. Problems are bad
"Real problems are wonderful, each carrying the seeds of its own solution. Job burnout? It's steering you toward your perfect career. An awful relationship? It's teaching you what love means."
Eckhart Tolle would suggest there are no problems - it becomes a problem because we link an emotion to a statement of fact.
2. It's important to stay happy
"...we don't have to be happy to feel good. "It's okay to be as sad as I need to be". This kind of permission to feel as we feel - not continuous happiness - is the foundation of well-being."
Eckhart Tolle would say it's fine to acknowledge the feeling - but not to get attached to it. Let if float in and out of our awareness. No resistance.
3. I'm irreparably damaged by my past.
Sometimes I sure as heck feel that way! But...
"the very thing you're doing at this moment - questioning habitual thoughts - is enough to begin off-loading old patterns. For example, take an issue that's been worrying you ("I've got to work harder!") and think of three reasons that belief may be wrong. Your brain will begin to let it go."
Eckhart Tolle would agree...:)
5. Success is the opposite of failure
"We succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn."
Aha - learning is my downfall. I try a lot. I fail a lot. But, I'm not so good at learning. But, I will keep trying...:)
6. It matters what people think of you
"Right now, imagine what you'd do if it absolutely didn't matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back."
Of course, this is a cornerstone to Eckhart Tolle. It only matters that we are true to our inner purpose.
10. Loss is terrible.
"Ten years ago I still feared loss enough to abandon myself in order to keep things stable. I'd smile when I was sad, pretend to like people who appalled me. What I now know is that losses aren't cataclysmic if they teach the heart and soul their natural cycle of breaking and healing. A real tragedy? That's the loss of the heart and soul themselves. If you've abandoned yourself in the effort to keep anyone or anything else, unlearn that pattern. Live your truth, losses be damned. Just like that, your heart and soul will return home."

Update:  I read the rest of the magazine this morning and there's LOTS of good information in it.  Overall a great issue.

Update again:  Here is a link to the full list

Editorial Cartoons from 2009

From Slate.com - A slideshow of Slate's top editorial cartoons of 2009.  I responded to the following ones particularly.

More on Afghanistan

A U.S. flag flies half-mast, in honor of the 13 dead and 30 wounded in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood Army post in central Texas, at an outpost for soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division in the Pech Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar province Saturday, Nov. 7, 2009. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

On November 5, 2009 NPR's "All Things Considered" aired 11 segments about our war in Afghanistan.

As a commenter mentioned in a letter to the show (listen to it here, 8th segment from the top), tactics based on peace and Gandhi are not even considered as an option in the debate about what's next for us in Afghanistan. Even on a show of reasonable people like "All Things Considered".
I feel sad and discouraged about that.

All Good Men

Obama salutes the casket of Sergeant Dale Griffin, who died in Afghanistan. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Barack Obama meets coffins of soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Self-esteem vs Ego

I've noticed many people stumble over the idea of self-esteem vs ego.  Its a key point in "A New Earth".  I enjoy reading Carolyn Hax' column and I like an answer she gave to a question about the difference between ego and self-esteem. 

QUESTION:  What is the difference between ego and self-esteem?  "Ego" seems to generate all sorts of problems, whereas everyone needs good "self-esteem".

ANSWER:  "Ego" can have several meanings, depending on context.  If you're discussing "ego" as a part of someone's psychic anatomy that just got bruised, then it's interchangeable with "self-esteem."  "Self" is another definition of ego, and Freud had his own definition.
I suspect the guidance you're looking for isn't semantic, though.  It's emotional:  When does good self-esteem go bad?
Ego and self-esteem are the bond between who you are and who you perceive yourself to be.  When your ego (or self-esteem) is healthy, you have a realistic idea of your strengths and weaknesses.  When your ego (or self-esteem) is unhealthy, there's a breakdown in one of two directions - you have significantly more, or less, going for you than you think.
To asses your own health, think of ego as the security guard while self-esteem is the institution it protects.  If the institution - the self - stands soundly on its own, built by hard work, a sense of purpose and a sense of accomplishment, then it doesn't need to hide behind a huge security/ego system to protect it. The result is a person who can shrug off failure, say, or rejections, or who can perform a so-called menial chore without fear of being lessened by it.  Its not needing a constant supply of approbation.  It's what people mean when they say, "S/he has no ego."
When the institution of self is shaky - when a person is praise-dependent, or feels unworthy - that's when it's paramount to appear strong.  Enter the ego staff, either to gin up bravado or to churn out preemptive apologies; to create and shore up your appearance of invulnerability, or to tear you down before anyone else gets the chance to; to decline to admit being wrong, or to scour for new ways you can blame yourself; to attempt to controls others, or to latch on to someone else; to chase away people who might get to know you too well.
Gauging your health may be as simple as checking your own maintenance program for lack of a better term.

 

Sunday Laugh

Today's Dilbert comic made me laugh out loud.  More than once!
Good one, Scott Adams...

 

"The 'Culture War' is real and scary"

Note:  This image is not associated with the opinion piece below.  Its the cover art of a book by James Davison Hunter that I thought captured the idea of the culture wars well.

Leonard Pitts column in the Miami Herald 9/16/2009
I would love to express myself as well as Leonard Pitts. He's great.

I don't know who coined the term ``culture war'' to describe our political divisions, but I'm reasonably sure he or she intended it only as a figure of speech.

It feels like something else in light of a new report from the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups. ``Terror From The Right'' is a listing of bombers, killers, would-be assassins and insurrectionists motivated by anger over abortion, gays, taxes, blacks, Muslims and illegal immigrants.

Which raises an obvious fair and balanced question: What about terror from the left? The SPLC's Mark Potok says left-wing terror essentially means eco-terrorists, e.g., animal rights extremists. The death toll from their work, he says, is zero.

By contrast, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people because he was angry at the government, brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams shot two men to death for being gay, James Kopp killed Dr. Barnett Slepian for being an abortion provider, and dozens of other men have been indicted for dozens of other plots to kill thousands of other people with whom they had political disagreements.

It's one thing to read these stories in isolation and another to see them collected, and thereby connected, here, one extremist plot after another in the 14 years since Oklahoma City. It gives you a sense that -- apologies to Buffalo Springfield -- there's something happening here and what it is is all too clear. The report provides troubling context for the outrageous behavior that has attended the election of our first African-American president.

When you call them on that behavior, Barack Obama's detractors love to accuse you of equating dissent with racism. It is a specious argument. I disagree with the president's use of signing statements to avoid complying with laws he doesn't like, but it would never occur to me to carry a sign vowing death to him, his wife and their ``two stupid kids'' as a protester in Maryland did, or to pray that Obama dies of brain cancer as a ``minister'' in Arizona does, or to heckle him during a joint session of Congress as Rep. Joe Wilson infamously did.

That's not dissent. It is the howl of the unhinged and the entitled. The same folks who were complacent as President Bush spent surplus into deficit, wasted $600 billion and 4,000 American lives on the wrong war and watched a major American city drown are morally outraged because the new guy wants to reform healthcare?

For many of them, I think -- not all -- that's because they find it hard to accept that the new guy is liberal . . . and black.

As Potok sees it, some of us are angry over the dramatic changes underfoot in this nation. ``People who want this country to remain a white-dominated country have lost. They have completely and utterly lost the battle, and they can never win it. If they were to seal the borders tomorrow, whites would still lose their majority in a matter of years, simply as a result of the difference in fertility rate. ''

As a result, many people ``feel that this is no longer the country that their Christian white forefathers built, that they have been robbed, that this isn't the world they grew up in and that they are very, very frightened'' -- a feeling stoked and exploited by political and media demagogues, who will loudly disclaim responsibility when that fear becomes violence.

The president is black, the secretary of state is a woman, the new Supreme Court justice is Hispanic, the nation is changing, becoming vastly more inclusive. If some see that as a redemption of promise, the SPLC report reminds us that others regard it as an embodiment of threat. For the record, at least six of the plots it recounts were motivated by, or against, Obama.

Take it as proof. ``Culture war'' is not a figure of speech.

For further information, read the Southern Poverty Law Center's report, Terror from the Right.

More Leonard Pitts brilliance from the Q and A section of his page on the Miami Herald website:

I think it's rather telling that many of the people who are imputing dictatorial tendencies to the current president based on evidence that is slim to non-existent, are the same ones who declared criticism of his predecessor unpatriotic back when he was arrogating unto himself the right to decide which laws to obey, locking people up without evidence or trial and turning the Justice Department into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.