IMG_3800, originally uploaded by Chrissy Mc.

This picture shows you a little bit of how I’m feeling today at the end of a long, busy week working 3 jobs & going to school! It’s some kind of jelly creature we found on the beach south of San Francisco last weekend.

Correction (Thanks Meg!)

~Marianne Williamson[Often said to have been quoted in a speech by Nelson Mandela.

The source is Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, Harper Collins, 1992. -Peter McLaughlin]

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“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Nelson Mandela

In reading my pyschology book by Carl Jung, I’m drawn to his ideas about studying psychopaths, dreams, and especially children’s dreams from ages 3 to 5, and comparing them to symbols in religious and mystical traditions. It’s like the astronomers out there, but instead of looking to the farest reaches of the universe in order to figure out who we are, we are looking into the deep, dark pools of the mind in its most primitive and uncontrolled states in order to find another piece of the puzzle of universal truth, if it exists.

I also love Jung’s comment that people look around and see chaos, so they infer there must also be order & intelligence, because in our paradigm, everything has its opposites; the existence of one extreme must prove the existence of its polar extreme. But what if the truth IS that chaos is the rule? Absolute order & intelligence cannot coexist with absolute chaos & randomness, right?

That’s where people run into issues with God being omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. It means that God is absolutely good, but also involved in everything evil that happens. People weasel around the subject saying God puts up with the evil so he can show he is good, etc. etc., but the reality is that omni means all, so deal with it…

My observations of life so far tend toward chaos as being the ruling factor in the universe, probably because it is so easy to explain away anyone who sees something as being ‘order.’ And this comes from a person that admittedly lives a “charmed life.”

If you were sitting around 6 billion years ago and wanted to calculate the statistical probability that a few million atoms floating around in space would arrange themselves 6 billions years later to form the symbols that make up the words you are reading right now, the calculation would tell you that it would NEVER happen, statistically. The fact that I’m communicating with you right now is impossible, but it’s happening. And what makes the impossible possible? Order? NO! Chaos!!

The arguement that statistically we shouldn’t be alive does not make me think that someone of higher consciousness must have rigged the game of existence/expression in our favor, for his own enjoyment/boredom-relief. To me, it just means we are freaks of nature of the freakiest kind. And freaks like us either turn out to be REALLY special, like the 8-year-old I went to college with, or as George Carlin says, we are some short-term experiment of nature, perhaps doomed to end up an evolutionary cul-de-sac, a biological dead-end.

Our hyper-consciousness, our mind’s abililty to overanalyze and make a myriad of choices (“…moved by every wind that blows,” Mary Shelly), has allowed us to fly to other rocks and keep our species alive for a couple hundred thousand years, but beyond that, where is it taking us? Mostly, we are just getting into trouble, like children pushing all the wrong buttons on a toy before finding the one that makes the right noise.

I could try to highlight our spritual pursuits, or the fact that we are trying to live more responsibly on the planet (and by responsibly I mean trying very hard not to poison and/or kill ourselves or the next few generations by draining the planet’s natural diversity and ecosystem balance). But it all seems trite compared with the readily accessible destructive power in our fidgeting, wandering hands. And all of this living a selfless, good and moral life simply elevates our chances of furthering our genetic existence through setting up long-term community support for ourselves.

If we do survive to flourish and become something truly great, then there must surely be a God. Given the timespan of our current universe, it would be retarted to think that it was all set up for us as the end-all, be all. If there was that much time before we existed (that we can measure), then there will be at least that much time AFTER our species has come and gone for more wonderful, magical, and freaky things to happen.

Let us then be content to make the best go of it that we can, knowing that any day could be our last. Letting go of our egoism, pride, and self-importance, and just enjoying the chaos and disorder while we have the means to. Try to experience yourSELF as deep as you can, and at the same time wrap your head around the incomprehensible bliss that is our collective existence, using all the tools available to you: dreams, religion, science, observations of children and animals and crazy people, collective knowledge, and YOUR experience.

This weekend we had a yoga retreat in Bolinas, CA, a quiet coastal town that most tourists don’t know about because the locals tear down every sign the government points toward it. It made for a very peaceful weekend, and the weather couldn’t have been better. We ate vegetarian meals, woke up at 6am to meditate, practice hatha yoga, and had long periods of group silence & reflection. It was a little yoga paradise. My vegetarian diet and fasting once a week has shed about 10 unneeded pounds off my body, and I’m feeling light and healthy, finally.

Remember my post a year ago when I was still working at Chevron and taking massage school classes at night? When health was the thing I desired most in my life? (Wheel of Life Picture) Well, one year later and I’ve finally met that goal.

My goals on the retreat were to purge my tendencies toward cruelty & injury (even in jest), and to bring in unconditional love & trust to my persona. I’m very glad I’ve found a yoga institute where I can flourish and be supported in love & light from my classmates & instructors.

I also started coaching the throws at SFSU last week. Today was my first day leading a workout and it was really nice. I hope I can impart some of my athletic knowledge, and more importantly, lessons from track & field that will make you a better person. We have a little getaway on Sunday with the athletes to a beach down south, which will be a good time to get to know each other a little better.

It's fitting that I would be drawn to study Yoga in the lineage of someone named Satchidananda, literally Sat 'truth' Chid 'knowledge' Ananda 'bliss'. My whole blog is dedicated the finding truth, and knowledge is a piece of truth that brings bliss. I love the pantheistic version of God and Truth as being everywhere and everything and all-pervasive but not readily accessible in entirety to the human mind! God is Love, God is Truth, God is Light, God is All.

Today will mark my 10,000th day in this body (see the About Me page). I must say, it’s holding up quite well in spite of some wear & tear!

I think when you look at your life in terms of how many days you’ve lived, it is easy to be amazed at how much life you’ve been gifted with. I’ve seen 10,000 sunrises & sunsets, all for free!

To celebrate, I think I’m going to try bodysurfing today at Ocean Beach. I’ll go buy a wetsuit and have fun bouncing in the waves.