The Buddy System

Monday, May 16, 2016

Page 137

Book of 2016

- Page 137 -

The Four Agreements as I have learned the by reading a book about them by Don Miguel Ruiz called "The Four Agreements"

I am on reading number 2 and will probably read it one more time before it is all said and done. The concepts seem very simple and like commons sense, but I am not sure they are either.

1. Be Impeccable with your Word

2. Don't Take Anything Personally

3. Don't Make Assumptions.

4. Always Do Your Best

I wrote a long time ago that I wanted my to be true to my word and that I wanted to be free to say whatever I wanted. I am not sure that is 100% what the first agreement is, I think it really means words have power and the words we say is what defines us. So don't say anything you can't or don't want to stand behind. However, I think they are related. I think that words are power. I think that the words especially the ones we tell are selves really define the reality in which we live in. If we believe all the things we say to ourselves in words and images or the flashes thru the brain and those images are negative and dark then how can our reality not be negative and dark? Speak with integrity. Don't speak against yourself. Use is to help shape a loving and well rounded dream.

I am one who takes everything personally. Don't email me or text me back, even if I say I don't care, it probably means I think you could give a shit if I ever talk to you again. I firmly believe that I am the center of not my universe but all universes and while I am the center of mine, others, not so much. I have a really bad habit of taking things personally. I think that is b/c deep in side I carry such a low opine of myself. Has the opine gotten better since we started this journey and speaking truth. Since we started to lay everything down here in the Buddy System, why yes, yes it has, but some things are hard to break. Sometimes, we over estimate our importance in the grand scheme of things. I need to master this one most of all b/c once i do I will no longer be the victim in my life but the godself I am looking to be.

Ah... the Assumption. What does it do makes an ass out of me and you...how many pounds can I attribute to making assumptions about what people are doing or saying or thinking? How much of my high blood pressure can be attributed to endless worry that is generated in my mind but not where else. If people could see the worlds I have built based off assumptions they would be impressed. Perhaps some day I will be able to write about them. However, right now, I can just tell you that they are grand and vast. They say if you can conquer this one agreement you can vastly change your life. If you can learn to communicate efficiently and effectively. Explain and discuss so you can avoid drama. Find the courage to ask the question and have the conversations you really want to have.

Work hard and be honest... I think when the tale of the tape is written and the one thing I learned from Doc more than anything else will be these words. Word hard and be honest. In my mind they line up perfectly with always do your best and another thing my dad taught me weekend after summer weekend of doing free hard labor in his garden no matter how hard I tried to get out of it was, do things right the first time. If you always do your best you can forget self doubt. If you always do your best there will be no regret. Have I done my best losing weight? No not even close. I have never given it the ole college try. I have let to many other things get in my way. So I have lots of regrets. What if I would have stuck to weight watchers when I was 12, 28, and 38? What if I would have stayed on Paleo and gone sugar free for a full year? What if, what if... so many regrets. What if I would have just let her go... What if I'd just finished Guardian at the Gate.. What if... So many things we can sit here and say what if too. however... we now have the time to do that. Now we see it for what it is so we don't have to question anymore. So that we can move forward. We won't always be perfect, but damn it we have a lot better in us than what we have shown!

Several people have asked me why my last few blogs have been so deep, or what is going on? I just site there and wonder why don't you see it? Can't you tell it? Can't you see I am trying to wake up form my current dream?

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Page 136

Book of 2016

- Page 136 -

I am not qualified to write what I am going to write. I am a traveler in search of peace for my soul. Who knows how long I will pull at this thread and get tired of it. I told you a few times over the last weeks that Don Miguel Ruiz and his book "The Four Agreements" blew my mind. Even in the 2nd reading which I am doing now it continues to enlighten me and help me search for something that I know is already inside me, I just need to unlock it. However, I cam across this line again today in my walking and as I looked around at the world around me not for the first time did I start to ask questions. Seemingly random little questions that I wonder if they aren't more important. I believe in my heart that there are other worlds than these. I believe that there are an infinite number of realities that span the time and space. I have often thought it would be so cool to write a book that outlined the what if scenarios of the choices we make. What would have happened had I decided to transfer from IU to ISU? What would have happened if I had stuck to atkins in college. So on and so forth across the vast majorities of the forks each and everyone of us come to in our life. Each time we turn left down the path, a version of our self turns right and seemingly we go to different out comes.

Again, I am not qualified in such things as time and space and the physics of the multi-verse. No, I am just a dreamer, that has probably read one or two to many Stephen King novels or comics books. i am just someone who is fascinated by the galaxy and its infinite set of possibilities.

Each time I think about the quote pictured above it leads me to a question I keep asking myself when I am on the highway to and from work. Each week days traveling about 80 miles per day. Cruising along at the speed limit, after I have an electric car and I must make good gas mileage, otherwise what is the point?

So I am driving and I either have one of my self help books going, sports radio, or some old rock band ripping the air waves with heavy guitar and music that sounds more like howls and screams than actual singing. I am driving along and I see a road sign. Pleasanton exit 2 miles or whatever it says and I say to myself that sign is green. I see it and it is green and if I asked you what color it was you would say green as well. However, do we see the same green? What if green to me is one color and to you it is another. I drive along and I think this, there is really no way to know. I will never look through your eyes and you will never look through mine. I can point to green on a color chart and you can point to the same thing and we will never know what each of us sees. I think about this stuff and my mind can't hardly stand it. I have a simple mind. I am not great thinker or philosopher. I am just a kid from the south side of Terre Haute that wants to believe.

Then as I ponder these realms of multiple points of view, I think about what is next beyond this time and this place. I have to go back to something I have heard over the years and that I find myself latching onto, that death is not the final step, it is just the next step on the path. Maybe heaven and hell wait beyond this time and place, but for some reason I don't think it is that simple.

I firmly believe I am in this vessel and in this time because my soul needed to learn something on this plan, something I had to know to continue my journey through the cosmos. I had to dream this dream in order find out something about myself. Perhaps it is humility? Perhaps it is faith? Perhaps it is to never quit? Never stop fighting for what you want. Maybe it is to quiet the mind and push hard for the peace you see just out of reach. I am not sure.

Again, i am not great philosopher and I don't have wise and sage advice. I am a man who is trying to understand such complex things as when you see the color green is it the same color I see? I also, know that I have work to do to make my dream, my dream!

I wonder if I ponder this stuff more than I used to these days because I feel like time is short in Indiana. I am not a doctor or a medical professional, and I am even less qualified to speak about this than the strange rant I just went on, however, something in my gut keeps telling me to go get two suits because you are going to need them. I think about this and I try not too, but the thoughts come. They un-glue me, but I stand back up and pull myself together. Time might be short but all that matters is what we do with the time we have been given. I hope to all the gods in all the heavens that I am wrong and thoughts about life and the cosmos and multi-verse are just things an over active incrimination dreams about in its idol time. Like I said I am not qualified to talk about any of this, but .. i did anyway.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Page 135

Book of 2016

- Page 135 -

Tyson brought my food today. I have never been so excited to see broccoli's and mushrooms in my life! Honestly, I have really enjoyed eating more veggies. I want to say while in Vegas I did 80/20 being on track but it was probably more like 70/30, ok, ok, 60/40 if I really stop and review each. hors d'oeuvres add up over time. However, shit happens. 60/40 is better than a lot of rations. Like 40/60, etc... I am back, have my food, and ready to do. although, I do have whip up some some breakfast for the week tomorrow. Shouldn't be a problem, I have a dozen of eggs, some bacon, and some cheese and that has casserole written all over it! Although, i should add some peppers up in the m'fer! Oh and spinach! There must be spinach!

Started listening to the Four Agreements again today. I am not going to lie, I am looking for something to help shape my believe system and I really like what that book has to say. The book is power. It covers a recurring theme that I see in my own life. That if you can accept yourself and guide yourself with love and positive energy then you can over come anything. I am not an expert and right now that is what I am taking from it.

The book speaks of the Judge! Every time it talks about the Judge, I see this awful image of someone who is powerful and hurtful in my mind. I think that is because I know that judge. I think it know tat judge because it is the monkey that has for so long ridden on my back, which his lower paws gripping and digging into my back and his right arm gripping my throat, all while his left swings a nine tailed whip. It is all the heartache and all the pain of a life time of feeling like I didn't fit. Like I was the odd man out. That I had it wrong. That living with your head in the clouds was wrong. Wanting to have love and peace was wrong. It is a life time of hate, rage, and bitterness swinging from that whip.

Then it speaks of the victim and don't we know that person all to well. We don't fear the victim though. Why would we? The victim is weak. He is pathetic and soft. He can't keep his word. he doesn't finish what he starts. He is a spinner of lies and excuses. Worst of all no matter how long her has known about that hate filled Judge Monkey on his back he can't ever stand up and shake it once and for all.

It talks about hell on earth and that we are living in that very hell. It is all around us. Its the violence, the hate, and the bitterness that is all around us every where we look. It says we can't be damned to hell because we are already there. i hear truth in those words, because I fully believe we are prisoners in our own mind. If we are unhappy and in hell, then it is our own making. It is our weakness of being the victim to a crazed judge that pushes us deeper and deeper into this hell on Earth.

Although the book does offer hope. It isn't one that just leads you to a dark place. A dark place that has brought tears to my eyes each time I have read it. They never fall, no, never fall, I am able to avert that. My focus will change just long enough to let them chicken out from a free fall and they go back down to where they came from.

The book is hope. The book shows a path to unmake the judge and victim in our own minds. It tells you how to make peace and move forward because that is all any of us can do. Is accept that which has happened and choose what we will do next.

I choose to move forward. Not only w/ the Stanford program but also with trying to put the war in my head to peace. I have flooded myself in the first quarter of this year with happy thoughts. I have changed my TV habits. I have changed my reading habits. I try and focus on a good outcome. I need tools to move this life and this existence forward. I am meant for greater things than bitching about my job and my weight. I am meant to do things that would astonish and amaze myself. I have always known this.

I refuse to be the person watching the party from the outskirts. I choose to be part of it. I choose to change it. This terrifying judge and this weak victim have a reckoning coming to them. The war in my head will soon known peace because I choose to believe now is the time. My transformation has just begun and some day I will look back to today and know that it was this day I pushed it further along the path.

While I will never be perfect. I will never the perfect human specimen. There will be no six packs or abs of steel in my future. I might always wear XL or XXL or even XXXL, ha ha ha, XXX =) I will make peace with that and I will be the version of me I am supposed to be and that is all I can ask for!

Friday, May 13, 2016

Page 133 and Page 134

Book of 2016

- Page 133 -

- Page 134 -

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Back home now time to get serious. I have two weeks to focus and get back on track. Not that I went completely off the rails, but I do need to hunker down and focus.

It is also Friday the 13th which historically used to scare me. Now it is just a day, but a day I take note on. I thought the picture was really funny.

I am ready for the weekend to start. I know I have had a day and a half work but vegas took something out of me.

I am getting puppy today so it will be a good weekend relaxing with my BFF. Other than that might do a little cooking out tonight. Tyson is bringing food on Sunday, ready to get back into veggie mode.

going to try to get to the pool this weekend... definitely going to try and soak up as many rays as I can. so the sun had best come out!

other than that nothing new to report.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Page 131 and 132

Book of 2016

- Page 131 -

- Page 132 -

Then and now and what really matters…

Then it was different. I believed. I had made a decision and I was happy with it. I was in the best spot I had been in for years.

Now, it changes from day to day if I believe or not. I don’t know really what spot I am in and what I am doing.

Sometimes I feel like the war rages on and I am the only man left manning the foxhole. The brothers in arms are all gone. Are they casualties of war or are you? Perhaps, you have created your own personal hell? That hell is you being alone in the foxhole and not quite understanding what the mission is supposed to be. It was supposed to be different. It was always supposed to be different.

I remember my dream a year ago. It was vivid and real and it seemed like it would be truth. The only truth is that sometimes things don’t go your way. Sometimes you forget what you are going to say. That is where I am at right now… lost my total train of thought when the phone rang.

I am ready to be home. I want out of Vegas. I get like this every time I come here. I really am just ready to be back in San Jose.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Page 130

Book of 2016

- Page 130 -

Night one in Vegas has come and gone. The slots kicked my ass, but the Warriors won and exciting to game!

Dad's back in the hospital and that really is putting a damper on things here. He has been in and out to many times of late. However he fights on and so will we!

The Warriors won a great victory today. However, so did I! My first meal in Vegas was perfect! Salad and burger with no bun!! I'm 89% sure I've never eaten anything in Vegas other than pizza, burgers, and fries! There was lasagna once and that was awesome! Anyway, we did good. The rest of the day wasn't great but it wasn't to nuclear disaster bad either! There was a salad at dinner too! Tomorrow will be a better day! For now I'll pay attention to this moment and focus on the here and now. I'll rally, I always do!