zerothehero

I got brave today and wrestled with a dethatcher. So, I'm not weeding yet, but I'm getting my strength back. I'm still hesitant to bend and pull. I'm 3 1/2 months from back surgery. Feeling pretty good physically. It's nice to get outside in the spring air.

zerothehero

Got interrupted. Anyway, feeling a bit out of sorts lately. Not sure what it is. Maybe just taking my eye off the ball. I'm gonna get a new book to help get me focused. I just feel like I'm stagnating. Hard to put my finger on it. Maybe it's seasonal. It will be 20 years next month since my mom died. She still haunts me some. She was a loving, tortured soul. In some ways I didn't fall far from the tree. She was my main inspiration for getting sober because I recognized that our addictions progressed similarly. We were both fun-loving buzzhounds that enjoyed the hell out of it until it became our nemesis. She was a year younger then I am now when she dropped dead from a brain aneurism. All these health concerns I've had lately make me wonder... Sometimes I try to take in every moment as if each is a gift, and other times I despair some. Fear and loathing and the sickness unto death, as Kierkegaard would say.

Anyway, I hope you're all well...

TigerLili

Thanks for the advice fellas! I hate getting dragged into other people's dramas. We have had a lot of drama since he has been here.

I'm so sorry about your mum, Zero. You have a lot going on already with your health. No wonder you feel not yourself. What book are you going to get?

zerothehero

Thanks, T. I ordered Refuge Recovery and Dharma Punx by Noah Levine, and another book for which he wrote the forward. Buddhist recovery stuff. Learned about it on another SR thread. Sounds right up my alley.

What are y'all reading these days?

jackrussell

I think that it's kind of common to feel a bit of a shadow and chill when we hit an age at which a parent's life ended. And I imagine that, in the big picture, that's exactly as it should be. I'm definitely feeling the clock tick, and recognize that some tension is growing because, despite a fairly robust rational mind, on many levels I still cannot accept my own demise: I just don't really believe it! Reminds me of a recurring line in some accounts of near death experience: 'I'm dead! I can't believe it!' That will be me, I suspect. Ha!
On the book front: Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth. Gorgeous writing. I'm amazed at what some people can do when they close their eyes and just make things up.

Vet69

Both of my parents were still alive at my age JR. However, I am in much better health and physical condition than they were. If I can stay away from alcohol I should be able to surpass their lifespan. Still, I get the chill you described. We're merely human.

I commend a book entitled " Many Lives, Many Masters" by Dr. Brian Weiss to you and to everyone in our little group. It's a bit much to get into here. But you can Google it. I think it would be worthwhile.

zerothehero

Past lives? And y'all thought feeding my demons was weird.

jackrussell

Thanks, Vet. The idea of reincarnation frankly gives me the willies. But, I will have to embrace whatever happens. And there are so many traditions that kind of screenwrite what will happen. All built on conjecture, belief, faith, fear and hope. Which is what we do, from where we are. We'll see. Or not.
I like the idea of living the moment. Do good work. Or the best possible, given circumstances; and forgive yourself and others. Not always easy. As we know.

jackrussell

Not wanting to chat too much. But I will. Vet: on a timeline, my mom died almost 20 years ago, lived to a ripe old age, one I can only imagine, living until 85. Dad died 53 years ago. Heart attack, fell down basement stairs. I heard him fall, and found him on the floor. Ran upstairs and got my mother, who was a nurse, and watched her fall on my father and wail. Cross cultural thing, the wailing for the dead. Apologies for sharing maybe too much sensitive detail. I am sobered (figuratively) by the fact that I am now the parent. My kids look at chinks in the armor, wanting to take care of us. Not quite ready for that yet, but grateful for caring sensitive kids. Tickled by the ride from kid to parent to watching kids watching parents! The wheel keeps on turning.

Dee74

Anything you want to share is fine, JR.

I'm very interested by reincarnation but I'm of the opinion I'll only get one shot at this

D

Vet69

No one could be more skeptical than me and if you read Dr. Weiss's background you will see that he was the greatest skeptic of all. As Chairman of the Psychiatric Department at Sinai Hospital in Miami - one of the most prestigious psychiatric units in the world - he was the epitome of an emprical scientist. An agnostic Jew himself, if it can't be proven by an empirical scientific method it was not valid to him. This woman he called by the pseudonym Katherine baffled his attempts to explain her story. It's worth the read. Dr. Weiss is an internationally renowned scientist and well published. He risked everything by revealing his conclusions. I'm not saying he's right, but he does have me thinking.

zerothehero

If I get reincarnated I figure the best I could do is otter. That would be preferred to your typical land rodent. This life very likely took me down a few notches.

jackrussell

Reminded me of this book out last year:

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Near-Death Experience and Journey into the Afterlife, by Eben Alexander.

Though I've heard a lot of questions around his position from other scientists.
I also believe that we only go around once.

zerothehero

I thought I was dying once but I was really high so I don't know quite what to make of it. It was the classic white tunnel image - heading toward the light. I was passing out and kind of snapped out of it when a guy caught me from behind as I was falling. I tend to believe these similar stories are like waking dreams resulting from misfiring synapses or something going on in the brain. We are all wired similarly, so these experiences could be explained by electrical malfunction. In other words, they are like archetypal images. Hallucinations. But then, other

Dee74

I've died a few times, as a child and an adult.

I was pulled back each time. Lucky I guess

Unfortunately I have no cool stories to share.
Nothing happened

D

jackrussell

Details, Dee?

Dee74

oh I drowned in a pool aged 5 - the water was shiny...I wore calipers as a kid - calipers don't float.

Lucky there was someone there who knew what to do.

I fell seven feet off an umpire stand head first into the ground aged 10. Again a doctor was handy.

I was told I was gone each time - particularly the drowning one.

then there's all the drunken adult stuff...

I'm a lucky guy

D

TigerLili

On the weekend I attended a paranormal conference. THere was a lot of discussion about spirits, past lives, future lives, UFOs etc. It was fascinating. I am of the opinion that a lot of the 'paranormal' stuff people experience is just something that can't yet be measured by science. People used to think the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth.

I also think that there is a lot about the brain we don't know. People have accepted brain disorders, or differences as I like to call them, like autism. Who's to say that perceiving paranormal phemomena isn't neurological rather than supernatural? We know that sensory deprivation like sitting in the pitch black will cause hallucinations. People with seizures and Turrets have in the bleak past been assumed to be 'possessed'.

I recently participated in some experiments with a university testing the ingestion of caffeine, sugar and other substances and what one then perceived as 'paranormal'. The results aren't published yet but I can tell you that the people who ingested caffeine saw a lot of darting lights once they were in a pitch black room. I think the paranormal/spiritual world needs to be more scientific and less superstitious.

In AA we say that God will give you sobriety. Paranormal/supernatural much?

I have also lived in a haunted house where bizarre phenomena was witnessed and experienced by groups of people at the same time. In inanimate objects moving, voices over the stereo etc. We are all still alive and it wasn't spooky. Just weird.

Fascinating subject.

TigerLili

This weekend I am going on a Bigfoot hunt. If we find one, we'll just take pictures of it and leave it in peace :-)

jackrussell

I know someone, an intelligent person, who believes that the world is flat. This whole 'round' business is something that 'they' have concocted and sold to us for whatever nefarious purposes. 'They' seem like quite a bad lot, really.

We live in an old house, about 150 years old, and many kids over the years have experienced things that are very hard for me as a hard-nosed materialist/ atheist to explain. Parts of a story come together from very separate sources: the tale of a visiting 80 something woman from the west coast; a 19th century family portrait taken in front of our house; an old well just behind our house; a visiting niece waking in the night in a room just beside that old well. It all comes together as a kind of delightful head-scratcher that is a good story to tell to visitors !