Act 3: Searching Outside, for the Change I want to See in the World

EVOLUTION STEP NO. 3: Learn How to (Better) Take Care of Myself

I was starting to get anemic because I wasn't eating meat. Yikes!

The Buddha sez:
We need take care of ourselves before we can help others, so I need to learn how to better take care of myself, so that I can be helpful to others.

N. B.

• If I'm eating a Veggie only diet, I need to make sure to consume enough:
• Iron
• Source: Green leafy things like spinach, kale, etc.;
• Don't like green leafy things like me? 
• Eat dark-colored dried fruit (like apricots, raisins, dates, etc.)
• Don't like chewing like me? (I'm lazy.) 
• The seaweed in Miso Soup.
• Ohitashi - yum!! 
• I should grow some spinach in the yard.
• Calcium
• Source: Hmm. Women tend to get osteoporosis. Pills, for now.
• Fat (like Omega 3)
• Source: Omega 3 tablets, in the form of fish oil.
• Vitamin B12 
• Source: Pills, Yeast.
• The body does a good job storing vitamin B12, so you won't feel a deficiency for a long time, even if you don't eat meat.
• You can get B12 from yeast. I put brewer's yeast or nutritional yeast on my popcorn (which is a very healthy snack if you make popcorn the traditional way). The yeast adds a cheesy taste, which is actually pretty yummy! You can make perfect popcorn every time - learn how!
• For more info, click here;

Conclusions:

• I will eat meat immediately in copious amounts, until I feel strong again;
• When I stop eating meat, I will supplement my diet with multi-vitamins; and
• Relax. Stop working so much.
• Too much stuff going on in the World. I need time to process.

See you later, alligator!

Stepping into the Light

ME

GOD

God? Who ARE you?

I am the Source.

A Source of what? vitamins?

Of Energy.

What kind of Energy?

Positive energy.

Are you then, the same as the Sun?

Sure, we both represent positive energy.

What about Love? Are you Love?

Of course I am LOVE!

I know. OK. Next question.
What is my purpose here?

That is something only you can answer.

Dear God. Please don't be so vague.

Many of you are still in search of Love.
Love, that most irrational, illogical process,
is that which you still seek,
after all else is said and done.
You SEEK love, and not ANY of the other material things that you coveted once.

Ultimately, the things you seek were made by Me - not YOU.

After all, I am your Creator, and the source of Good in you.

And you are a part of a World that was created to perfection already.
Love has always been within You.
You hold the key.

That's why it all begins and ends with You.
You are the Source of Love, Positive Energy, and the World you live in.
The World is Merely A Reflection of You.

And if you can understand this, you will be fine.

The Observations of Change: Noticing Patterns in the Universe, and learning about Love, Buddha style.

Noticing Patterns in the Universe: Positive Energy and Love

Sunshine is a ten year old girl. She is the French-Japanese hapa daughter of the Wonderful Me, my original kindred spirit. The Wonderful Me and I have been friends since we were ten, when we sat next to each other in an auditorium on the first day of our fifth grade Saturday Japanese school class. Her last name is similar to mine, and we are born six days apart. For some reason, when our eyes met in the auditorium that day, we both started to giggle. The Wonderful Me believes that we've known each other in our past lives. She has been one of my spiritual teachers, though we bicker an awful lot sometimes, especially when she's had enough of my continual verbalizations about how we should be combating climate change, and because I keep complaining about how much people drive in L.A. I've adopted the habit of going into silent meditation when she complains. And then she gets upset at me for not talking to her. It's very difficult to please women. We are very fickle.

A couple of days ago, I asked Sunshine if she had any questions about the Universe. She thought about it intently for a few seconds and asked: "What's the difference between positive and negative?"

"Great Question!" I exclaimed. I was excited that she asked such a sophisticated question. I am not a scientist, but I knew enough to tell her the following:

"When you study everything in the Universe, you learn that scientifically, we are just Energies. And you learn that Positive particles  (i.e. protons) share Energy with Negative particles (i.e. electrons).

To illustrate my point, I grabbed a yellow plastic Easter egg on Sunshine's bookshelf, and told her that the egg represented Energy. I told her: "I want you to be Positive. I'll be Negative. And now, I want for you to toss me your Energy." And then I tossed her the egg, so that she could toss it back to me. We tossed back the egg back and forth a couple of times, each time exclaiming, "Negative!" and "Positive!" as we threw the egg at each other. Pickle, their mutt dog (he looks like a cross between a beagle and a pitt bull) joined in on the catch-ball, as Kuro just watched not quite getting what all the fuss was about.

Then I continued: "Humans also manifest these Energies. Let's be Positive and Negative when we toss this egg back and forth. I'm Negative, so I'm going to say, 'I can't do anything.'" Sunshine caught the egg and didn't know what to say, so I told her as a Positive energy, she should say, "I can do everything!" And she did.

So we continued on;
Me:              "I'm not happy."
Sunshine:         "I'm Happy!"
Me:              "I'm tired."
Sunshine:         "I'm not tired!"
Me:              "This is no good."
Sunshine:         "This is great!"
She caught on pretty quickly.

Then I told her: "So, the Positive and the Negative elements simply share energies. It is a pattern in our Universe. I will also tell you that Positive energies stand for Love. Negative energies stand for the opposite of Love, like Fear. So let's change roles now. I'm going to be Positive now. You can be Negative."

Me:        "I love you." I tossed her the egg.
Sunshine:   "I don't love you." She tossed me the egg.
Me:        "I love you." I tossed her the egg.
Sunshine:   "I'm hungry." She tossed me the egg.
Me:        "I love you." I tossed her the egg.
Sunshine:   "I'm ...." Sunshine didn't know what to say.

So I continued: "Do you know what happens after we exchange these energies? Give me your hand. The exchange of energies will bring us closer to each other." I held out my hand, and pulled her towards me as I met her half way. I gave her a big fat hug and told her, "We become One. Does that make sense?"

Sunshine looked a little confused, and said, "Kinda."

Love, Buddha Style

After this discussion, it was time for me to join them for a Kid's Kadampa class at Silver Lake (I was in Los Angeles). Sunshine's Daddy recently moved back to France, so it was just the three of us (Me, WM, and Sunshine). Quite coincidentally (though I don't believe in coincidences - instead I believe in patterns) we talked about positive and negative people.

The Instructor had a board that was separated into three parts. He handed out to all the kids some plastic happy faces, sad faces, angry faces, and neutral faces.

• The Instructor first said, "I want you to think about all the people you love to spend time with that make you happy, and tell me about them as we put all the happy faces on the top half of this board. Sunshine was the first to jump up and name one of her best friends at school as someone that makes her happy. A couple of kids followed, and soon the top half of the right side of the board was filled with happy faces.
• The Instructor next said, "I want you to think about all the people you don't really like." One boy exclaimed, "I need more faces." Sunshine jumped up and again, named one of her best friends. Soon the lower half of the right side of the board was filled with sad or angry faces.
• The Instructor then said, "I want you to think about all the people in the World that you don't care about. Who might those people be?" I forgot that I wasn't a kid and exclaimed, "People I don't know!" Soon the entire left side of the board was filled with neutral faces.

So then the Instructor continued. "OK. So this is often how we see the World. Some people we like, some people we don't like, and most people we don't care about. This, in fact, may just be a reflection of how we see the World. We like to be with people that make us happy because they are positive. We don't like to be with people who are negative. And then the rest we just don't care about. But the Buddha teaches us that we should not distinguish how we treat any of these people. We should always strive to be Love, no matter who the person is. So let's do a meditation on how to do this."

Meditation Technique so that you can Love like a Buddha

Then the Instructor taught us a meditation technique. We were asked to partner up with someone we just met. My partner was apparently a soap opera star, which was fitting, since this was L.A. after all. The Instructor told us to just focus on our breathing, while we sat next to the Stranger - which in my case was OMG a soap opera star. First, the instructor asked us to find love for the person sitting next to us, as we focused our attention on breathing normally. I did my best to sit like a Buddha. Then, the instructor asked us whether we could expand that love to include everyone else in the room, and then maybe even beyond the room. Later, our instructor gave us each a small rock, as a reminder of our ability to feel Love for strangers. The kids painted their rocks with glitter but I thought MY rock was beautiful in its natural state so I kept it that way.

We are the Producer of our Own Lives, and we are a mere Supporting Character to other People

During Kadampa's General Program for adults, the monk, who was a woman, talked about Karma and how we experience life the way we do because of the Energies we have put into the Universe in the past. She talked about how, in fact, we are all Producers of our very own movies called Life, and that we all possess the power to write our own screenplay. Again, how fitting to be in L.A. to be told by a Buddhist Monk that I should envision myself in my own Movie. "Cool" I thought, "My movie would be a Dramedy."

Afterwards, I felt a sense of deep humility with a new found insight that the most I could hope to be for anyone else in this lifetime was to be their supporting character. The most I could do is to strive towards Universal Love, and be thankful if I feel exhausted, because sometimes it feels like all I did that day was be a supporting character. As discussed in the blog post about the malfunctioning brain, many of us suffer from a negative bias, so sometimes I think I feel like I'm not receiving support, even if I am.

Mystery Solved

When I stubbornly don't learn from the patterns in the Universe, the Universe keeps sending me the same lessons, over and over again, so that maybe I'd get off my high horse and learn to work with the flows of the Universe, not against it. And as I learn to be at Peace with what the Universe hands to me, hopefully life will become easier.

Since I was a kid I've been asking myself and others: "What's the point of all this?" Life is full of suffering and even as a kid I didn't understand why we had to drag our tattered souls through this lifetime only to experience life and it's patterns again and again. But now I feel like I'm getting closer to that "Point."

Now, where there used to be no perceivable "point" to my life, I've given my life a purpose. I have no other goal in this lifetime other than to be love and give love. It is a privilege, and I accept that that is what I need to do: To Be Love, tirelessly. Because our future is intricately interwoven with each others': Because we are One.