Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts

Saturday, January 17, 2026

Naked: How to get NUDE with us (1/18)



WHAT HAPPENED?
The "all" that is burning was like a dream.
We gathered, cleaned, offered dana and took the Five Precepts with the abbot, ate lunch, meditated, then culminated the day with a chanting of the Patthana ("Conditional Relations"), and a Q&A period with the Sayadaw explaining that all things (composites) are "empty," which is to say utterly impersonal. This, however, is only true for one who knows and sees. One can directly see all manner of physical and psychological (material and mental phenomena) particles, kalapas and cittas and see that they are not "self" just as the historical Buddha saw. But why would anyone want to see such a thing?

This is "awakening" from the illusion of the suffering we identify as we remain tenaciously attached to the Five Aggregates clung to as self. What, then, if we were to let go? Of course, we do not have the power to let go. Form will not let go of form, feelings will not give up feeling, perceptions will not stop perceiving, mental formations will not give up fabricating our reality, and consciousness will not stop processing stimuli and data from the outside world.


So we can get or stay dressed?
And so long as the illusion lasts that these five heaps take all of this to be the work of a soul or self (attaatmanjiva), the possessions of a self (I, me, and mine), just so long will suffering continue and get worse. To be done with it, to lay the burden down, we must bring about calm and focus -- sustained attention to see things as they really are. When that is seen, letting go happens by itself. A woman clutches a rope. How long will it take her to let go in horror and disgust when she realizes it is a venomous snake?

Just so, the aggregates cling to the aggregates (and all that they feel belong to this imaginary "self" or "soul" or "ego" they are constantly constructing). How long will it take to let go when they realize that all of this has been impersonal, impossible to satisfy (because things can never offer fulfillment), and radically impermanent (arising, turning, and hurtling toward destruction)? In an instant of seeing, one clings no more. Therefore, to get there, let us let the mind/heart settle into stillness, develop clear-seeing (vipassana), and awaken to direct insight of the Truth. The Truth will set us free.

EVENT: Adults getting nude in L.A.

Register: Dharma Buddhist Meditation
This Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026, go to Temple or Church, preferably some place silent and contemplative. We'll be at the new Buddhist temple in the San Gabriel Valley doing "good karma," cleaning and building it up to make a lovely place for everyone to come practice the historical Buddha's authentic teachings preserved in a Southeast Asian country that honors the Pali canon while sitting next to Mahayana China.

Six-Minute X-Ray: Rapid Behavior Profiling

Pole dancing is sexy stripper training.
Author and profiler Chase Hughes (narrated by Jonam Ross) has 4.8 out of 5 stars (with 1,754 reviews) and has a #1 Best Seller in Physiological Aspects in Psychology.

With skills specifically designed for intelligence operations (intel ops), Chase Hughes releases yet another groundbreaking audiobook. In Six Minute X-Ray, learn the most powerful people-reading system in the world.

Hughes exposes and unpacks simple techniques that come together to allow anyone to see beyond the mask that people are wearing. In less than six minutes, know more about the hidden side of the person speaking than their own friends and family -- no joke.

(N.A.S.A.) "Electric Flowers" (Mario C. Remix) ft. Nina Persson, RZA

How to see behind the masks we wear:
  • Masks we wear may be better?
    Identify anyone's (including our own) hidden fears and insecurities in less than five minutes
  • Quickly and easily get an 80 percent read of a person before meeting
  • Enable people to become the most vulnerable, open, confident, and best version of themselves during the first six minutes of meeting them
  • Discover hidden secrets about a person in six minutes to gain access to their most hidden beliefs and values
  • Use this information to create undivided attention and cooperation
  • Exactly how to tune in and adapt language to the internal language of anyone speaking
  • Rapid Behavior Profiling: Lying? Grief?
    Detect deception the moment it occurs, and know exactly how to deal with it
  • Professionally qualify or disqualify the person or team being met within the first meeting
  • Get past the social and corporate mask of people – and see them as they are
  • Determine the truth behind the desires, fears, and motivations of a counterpart, even when they don’t say it
  • Read a room of people like a special agent – guaranteed
  • Recognize dominance, fears, and needs before speaking with the person or group
  • Become aware of your own social needs and weaknesses and prevent yourself from being misled or manipulated
  • Instantly identify the physical position to take when speaking with a person of interest
  • Create rapport with the person instead of the mask they’re wearing
  • And much more... More
Who is CHASE HUGHES? He's former intel who also wrote The Behavior Ops Manual.

Monday, November 10, 2025

Magic mushrooms science (Meadow)


Medical doctor explains psilocybin therapy

I remembered I was spirit experiencing a body.
(Dr. Tracy Townsend MD) Sept. 16, 2025: In this video Dr. Tracy Kim Townsend -- a licensed medical doctor, psilocybin facilitator, and co-founder of Meadow (the world’s first legal psychedelic medicine practice founded by a physician) breaks down:
  • What psilocybin is,
  • How it works in the brain, and
  • Why leading researchers are calling it one of the most promising medicines of our time.
Dr. Tracy Kim Townsend speaks to fellow psychonauts on microdosing

⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
  • 00:00 - Intro — What is psilocybin?
  • 02:10 - History and cultural use of psilocybin mushrooms
  • 04:30 - Psilocybin vs. antidepressants: key differences
  • 07:20 - Brain science — serotonin, default mode network, neuroplasticity
  • 11:00 - Research highlights: Johns Hopkins, NYU, Imperial College
  • 14:30 - Integration: why the weeks after matter most
  • 17:50 - My personal journey with psilocybin as a physician
DISCOVER:
Mental resonance imaging of the DMN
• What psilocybin is and the history of its use in healing and ceremony
• How psilocybin affects the brain, including serotonin receptors and the default mode network (DMN)
• Why psilocybin is non-addictive and ranked the least harmful substance in a UK drug harm study
• Breakthrough FDA designations and research from Johns Hopkins, NYU, and Imperial College London
• The difference between psilocybin and antidepressants (SSRIs) in how they impact emotions
• Neuroplasticity and why integration after a journey is key for lasting transformation.

✨Curious if psilocybin therapy might be right for you?
✨ Key studies referenced:
• Johns Hopkins: Psilocybin for Major Depressive Disorder (JAMA Psychiatry, 2020)
• Johns Hopkins: Long-term follow-up, showing benefit out to 12 months (Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2022)
• Psilocybin vs SSRIs in Treatment-Resistant Depression (NEJM, 2022)
• UK Drug Harms Study (Lancet, 2010)

📖 Want a simple, physician-created reference? Download our Free Mushroom Dosing Guide here: meadowmedicine.org/dosing...

📌 NOTE: This video is for educational purposes only. It is not medical advice.

🔔 Subscribe for more down-to-earth education about psychedelics, psilocybin therapy, and holistic healing: ‪@TracyTownsendMD‬ 💬 Have questions about psilocybin? Drop them in the comments.
  • Sensationalist influencer Cleo Abram, 2024; Tracy Townsend MD, Sept. 16, 2025; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Losing Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, 82


Remembering the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson
Drug abuse takes down another music genius
(CBS News) June 11, 2025: Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson, born in Inglewood and raised in Hawthorne, both in Los Angeles, California, has died at 82. Rolling Stone contributor Joe Levy joined CBS News to discuss the artist. Surfing blond sex symbols from sunny Southern California or dysfunctional Christians on drugs trying to reach a sound never heard before, inspiring The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

CBS News 24/7 is the premier anchored streaming news service from CBS News and Stations that is available free to everyone with access to the internet and is the destination for breaking news, live events, original reporting and storytelling, and programs from CBS News and Stations' top anchors and correspondents working locally, nationally, and around the planet. It is available on more than 30 platforms across mobile, desktop and connected TVs for free, as well as CBSNews.com and Paramount+ and live in 91 countries.

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Free writing workshop: How to story (5/6)


WHAT HAPPENED?
New open mic: SPARC Centre Gallery
It was a full house of participants gathered on a damp and drizzly evening. Next local poetry event is May 15th, 4:00-6:00 pm at the SPARC Centre Gallery. Also in attendance were the current Poets Laureate Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon, who announced the upcoming "Poetry & Cookies" on Saturday, May 17, 2025, 4:00-6:00 pm (with a surprise open mic portion, so sign up). A beautiful land acknowledgement to the Native Tongva (Kizh, Gabrieleno) tribe of Los Angeles and region including the Channel Islands was delivered by the head of the library to launch the evening. Handouts were given and introductions were made. Then we got to writing, prompted by the workshop leader, former library Poet Laureate Dr. Lipkin. Grief was expressed about the Eaton Fire four months after the LA Fire devastated the city.


These three submissions, written on site, stood out. A page of writing prompts was handed out with leading phrases meant to trigger the creative process and the start of a poem (prompt shown in green).

THE NIGHT WAS DARK BUT THERE WAS ONE LIGHT.
The tunnel, the train, ah, the 6:40, yes, right on time. And here by its light, the reason for my stumbling, railroad ties -- and this long slick guide, steely, cold in pointing only this way or that. You see, I can't go back. I was fated forward roam, here alone, at night, right on track, in search of some way out. Then came the breeze, a breath, fresh air cool on my face -- with something left to face, over there, one more thing, right there. The night was dark but there was one light.
The two hours raced as we each wrote four pieces -- a fairytale, elegy, persona poem, and a prompted piece. Poets love to "paint" outside the lines, so every work of creativity was its own, each somewhat elegiac for what was lost to the fire. Only a small percentage of the participants were men; one cried as did another woman, who read and read every chance she could get, apparently dying for validation.

Fire Gained a New Power

Eaton Fire burned down to Woodbury...
Who knew, not I, that Fire had the power to fly
from up to down and back again
from crest to Woodbury and even Washington
The Monster of All-Consuming Light

The Mountain Ogre who gorges on the gorge
The Fiend who in fright delights --
with wind and its own weather and lines
that arc to heaven to call down lightning strikes

Bunnies and bears, feral felines, oak-gall-eating
co'yotes, sinuous serpents skewered on spits
of dangling branches -- and
everywhere Embers

The power of flight
     The power of fire
          to take aim and consume
               all it desired as if to say

All that lumber you took with not a sign of respect,
I will fully feast on just the same

Alternate Endings

Would I have it another way, the fire?
Better it had never been?
No, there's something in it, something perfect.
The Akashic Record is a bin -- so to have it
"different" means it's somewhere the same:
IT - IS - WRITTEN.

But I would my part rearrange:
Just as every smart accused person "lawyers up,"
I'd "insurance up" in advance,
take a policy out on myself, homeowner's, full
coverage, renter's, and lots and lots of comprehensive.

You see, in every down market, someone wins.
Every "loss" is to someone's advantage.
Foresight is hindsight turned on its head
by the insertion of time, which spoils the equation.

You'll pay me how much for my cars?
I get to rebuild in the same spot?
If I'd known that, I would have sang,
"Let it burn, let it burn, let it burn."
.
EVENT DETAILS
Into the Woods: Using fairy tales to tell YOUR story with Elline Lipkin
Poet Laureate Elline Lipkin
Fairy tales have been around for centuries because they capture something essential about the human experience.

In this workshop, we will use fairy tales and their tropes as inspiration to write about our own lives.

Thinking about the forest, the animals, the seasons, and the symbolic characters we find in fairy tales, we will explore the persona poem and elegy, among other exercises to spark the imagination, to celebrate and commemorate Altadena, and to process grief.
The workshop is FREE and open to the public -- all ages and backgrounds welcome.

Please bring a notebook and pen if possible; otherwise, the Altadena Library may provide writing utensils.

Anniversary of the LA Fire
The Jan. 7th fire was the worst in its history
Tuesday, May 6, 2025, marks nearly four months since the Eaton Fire devastated the Altadena community. We extend a special invitation to Altadena, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre residents and to those impacted by the Palisades Fire. Please join us to write and process experiences, releasing grief, and showing Los Angeles community resilience.
  • Tuesday, May 6, 2025, 5:30–7:30 pm
  • Altadena Main Library Community Room
  • 600 E. Mariposa Street (west of Lake Ave.)
  • Altadena, California 91001 (626) 798-0833
  • Programs — Altadena Library District
Lipkin, UChicago Graham School
ABOUT
: The presenter of this workshop is former Altadena Library Poet Laureate (2016-2018) Dr. Elline Lipkin, PhD, a poet, nonfiction writer, and academic (Prof. Elline Lipkin, UChicago, Graham School) who until the Eaton Fire had been an Altadena resident for 13 years. She holds an MFA and PhD in literature and creative writing and has been a research scholar with UCLA's Center for the Study of Women. She is the author of two books. Her third, Girl in a Forest (on triohousepress.org), is forthcoming in October 2025. She served her community for two years as Altadena Poet Laureate and editor of the Altadena Poetry Review.
Get it published in Wisdom Quarterly
Those who produce a poem worthy of attention at this workshop are encouraged to submit it to Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal for consideration. Editors will consider submissions, and publication may be the result. Yesterday (May the 4th Be With You Day) this website had 53,000 views, and today (Cinco de Mayo) 56,000 and counting (running from 5:00 pm to 5:00 pm). Moreover, the past six months have seen 2.94 million views. So publication may draw considerable attention to your efforts.


Poetry open mic in South Pasadena

Read works of poetry, short fiction, memoir, slam, spoken word, rap, whatever in a circle of area poets at South Pasadena Arts Council SPARC Centre Gallery located at 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena, third Thursdays, from 4:00-6:00 pm. FREE

WEEKLY: Meditate with Amy Rutledge (Tuesdays via Zoom)
Meditate with Amy Rutledge, virtually, on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 6:30–7:00 pm via Zoom. All-ages are welcome. Join Amy and others for a guided half-hour meditation via Zoom in recognition of Mental Health Month. Be kind to yourself and chill in a group for 30 minutes.
ABOUT: Amy Rutledge came to the study of meditation as a path toward personal healing after struggles with the effects of Lyme disease as well as depression and anxiety. She found that it helped her in unexpected ways when many other approaches failed. More: meditatewithamy.com

Monday, March 24, 2025

Don't buy love: Rent-a-Grandma 👵

(Solace Fox) Nothing changes until we do this. (Just do this)

Granny, can you get us some chocolate?
Motherhood is strange. It leads to motherhood. Every mother has a mother, who for the next generation is called the grandmother. But not every individual has the luck, karma, or good fortune to have a Grandma to rely on. Thems is the breaks.

"Always Trust Your Grandma" childcare, nannies, and pet care to the rescue. Welcome to Rent A Grandma (RAG), which provides vital, healthy, safe "care providers." RAG specializes in placing caring women, possessing deep life experience with families as nannies, babysitters, and in-home care providers, as well as chefs, cooks, and highly experienced domestic staff.

App Store BadgeLearn more about RAG's services or contact the with any questions or comments. Check out Rent A Grandma in the App Store. Browse grandmas and create an account from an iPhone or iPad.

Remember, these Grandmas offer excellent care as: babysitters, nannies, baby caregivers, after school care, special needs care, housekeepers, senior care/companions, personal assistants, pet care/sitting, cooks, tutors [but not call gals, dates, or Vegas ranch workers, so don't ask, or ask very gingerly because it's not legal outside of Nevada]. Subscribe to mailing list: rentagrandma.com

Friday, February 21, 2025

Ouch, it's National Breakup Day 💔


National Breakup Day: reflect, grow, move on
May the Force be with you...but not today.
(Big Fox News) Feb. 21, 2024: Today is National Breakup Day. (Is it because it's "2/21" -- "two, two, one" as in "couple, couple, single" as in "going, going, gone"? No, this is no May 4th, Star Wars Day, when we say, "May the 4th be with you." It's because it's a week after Valentine's Day and Boo was only sticking around to not be alone on the momentous triumph for Kama/Cupid (Mara/Eros) or to get a gift, dinner, and to avoid the humiliation of sitting alone at a restaurant on the biggest day of the year for daters, lovers, and soon to be heartbroken and pathetic hungry ghost humans).

Love hurts, and breaking up hurts worse. So hu-man up! Don't act like such a clingy ghost. That is to say, get out of Buddhist cosmology's Realm of Hungry Ghosts. If you can't help it, talk to addiction medicine specialist Dr. Gabor Maté, who says we can become addicted to anything, even a partner (even though no person, sexual act, or substance is, in and of itself, addictive. If it were, everyone partaking would become an addict, and they don't. So why did we? It's because of our history of early childhood traumas. We are predisposed. That history combined with pleasant dopamine-pleasures = hardcore addiction. And today is the day we are disposed.

Now are ye undeceived.*

It gives singles -- and even those who are attached in a committed relationship, marriage, or handfasting -- a day to reflect on past relationships and realize our own personal growth gained from those experiences.
Why do people break up? Top 5 reasons
The Linda Lindas play Bear Mtn for KROQ
Feb. 21, 2025: The five fastest ways to get broken up with are: (5) hogging the remote (taking too much ownership of the TV, the complaint of 15% of partners), (4) fake listening (failing to communicate because of distraction, ADHD, and not listening), (3) bad money management (splurging, gambling, no control of finances), (2) forgetting [Is it forgetting?], and (1) smoking (the worst thing a partner can do for 64% of people about to breakup with us). Note that neither stinking, snoring, nor cheating made the list. Lesbian Ally Johnson looked it up and presented it to horny hetero co-host Klein on KROQ this morning.
Nothing hurts worse than realizing the person you were in love with is an evil jerk
I'll never write a spiteful song about this guy. He's perfect. And we'll always be happy!
.
Let's stand by this star as the world burns.
*American author Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an allegory, the climactic part of which reads: "by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.

“Lo! there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic [now demonic] nature could yet mourn for our miserable [human] race.

“Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived! — Evil is the nature of [hu]mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!”

“Welcome!” repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph. And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this dark world.

A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own.

The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!

“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband. “Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!”

Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew ("Young Goodman Brown" classic American literature, 1835 short story about 17th century Puritan New England).

If only the Buddha had had anything to say about suffering



On many occasions, being asked questions, the Buddha reminded people that he only really taught two things. Any guesses? Did he teach magic and koans? Yin and yang? Mojo and moxie? The Kama Sutra and The Art of Not Giving a F***?

No. Of course, it was suffering (dukkha) and the end of suffering (nirvana). Why would anyone "teach suffering"? The Buddha had to make clear what "suffering" means. He defined it very handily and broadly, a functional definition for the cure he is about to present. What is the use of being told there's a cure if we haven't realized what disease we have been suffering from? "Pain" is much broader than we've imagined, as it includes disappointment, frustration, loss, separation, and even the excruciating agony of heartbreak.

But that's so pessimistic!

No, it isn't. It's a setup for the presentation of the antidote, solution, cure -- the path of practice to bring ALL suffering to a final end. We never even imagined we could bring it to an end, hoping death would do that for us. Death does not do that at all! Why? There is rebirth, and the reason there is rebirth is because there is craving and karma as yet to bring about its many results of all our skillful and unskillful deeds.

ALL disappointment, unsatisfactoriness, and woe CAN be brought to an end, a final end for it to never arise again. That is the great optimism of Buddhism, the "good news" of the Buddha's message to a benighted world of humans and devas (light beings, shining ones).

Suffering (dukkha): Disappointment is one of the Three Universal Marks of Existence. Various sutras sum up how cognitive processes result in our aversion (resistance, hate, fear, revulsion) to unpleasant things and experiences as we are moved to crave, grasp at, and cling to pleasure (sukha), keeping us in saṃsāra, the Cycle of Death and Rebirth. It is at the root of the Five Aggregates clung to as "self": (re)birth is suffering, aging, illness, death, sorrow, lamentation, mental pain, grief, and despair are s; suffering, asociation with the unloved, separation from the loved, NOT GETTING what one wants, getting what one does not want, all of this is "suffering." In brief, the Five Aggregates clung to as self (khandha, skandhas) are suffering.

The Four Noble Truths are Buddhism in a nutshell because they present the whole of the path of practice in four ennobling (enlightening) statements, like the assessment of a master physician:
  1. Diagnosis: There is a disease (suffering)
  2. Etiology: There is a cause of that disease (craving rooted in ignorance and associated with aversion)
  3. Prognosis: There is a solution
  4. Cure: There is way to the solution (magga, the path).
Early emphasis is on the importance of developing liberating insight (vipassana) to penetrate these fundamental truths about existence is key, and that insight is arrived at by the path of purification, the path to freedom, which is calm leading to samma samadhi, the meditative absorptions (jhanas), to reach a foundation of balanced stillness and intensification of mind able to penetrate them. It is not by thinking or study, belief or powerful faith. One needs to experience these truths until they are self-evident, not statements, not assessments, not doctrines.

The fourth truth is the general Ennobling Eightfold Path, but there is a more detailed summary enumerated in the 37 Requisites of Awakening/Enlightenment (bodhipakkhiya-dhamma).