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Eat good brain food
Climbing back on my soapbox.
Do you respond with great vigor to counting calories and otherwise watching what you eat? Are you concerned that you or someone you love may be ingesting too much comfort food?
So what do you do for your mental diet?
“Diet and exercise” is a phrase commonly applied to maintaining great physical health. We know it’s important. We know that if we don’t do it, we’ll suffer the consequences in expanding waistlines, reduced energy, and serious health problems. We’ll see and feel the negative effects in a very tangible way. It’s just a matter of time—tick, tock, tick, tock.
What about brain food?
Scary stories through the years
The longer I live and the more I explore this world and its bloodstream of ideas, the more ways I discover that people are waiting for … and dreading … the big one.
When I was growing up, the first big one was thermonuclear holocaust at the hands of the Russians. I remember lying in bed dreading what the Russians were up to and wondering what I ever did to make them want to incinerate my dog and me. I was just a little kid. Of course, this was at a time in my youth when I believed that the United States of America would truly do no wrong. We were here to save the world. Only foreign countries did bad things, and God pledged allegiance to us.
By the time the Cuban Missile Crisis arrived, a new antagonist had stepped center stage—Satan! One of my very first girlfriends was a Jehovah’s Witness, and she (but mostly her mother) told me all about how we were all awaiting Armageddon, the battle royal between the meanies of hell and the angels of heaven. That would usher in the wonderful new world where you could happily play with rattlesnakes and lions in paradisical friendship.
My wildest dreams defy conformity
A phrase I hear a lot lately is beyond your wildest dreams.
I have been hearing it a lot in the context of the law of attraction. It often comes up in Facebook wall posts and link-sharing. It is popular with life coaches and seminar leaders who cheer us on to create the proverbial good life.
Find a career beyond your wildest dreams. Find a relationship beyond your wildest dreams. Live like a king and queen in a lifestyle beyond your wildest dreams. Make your wildest dreams your reality.
"Dad, did you know that you're dead?"
Is there some unwritten law that prohibits characters in woo-woo movies and novels from being inquisitive about their paranormal encounters? Do they always have to be so thick-headed in the face of revolutionary changes to their reality?
If I saw Shoeless Joe Jackson standing on a baseball field that I made out of a cornfield after a voice told me if I build it he will come, I’d have a few questions. I’d show a little spunk. I wouldn’t just leave it at, “Oh, there’s Shoeless Joe Jackson. Hi there.”
Don’t get me wrong. Field of Dreams is one of my favorite movies. That’s largely because it whets my appetite for more answers about why we’re here on this planet.
Write an international bestseller—make a fortune
Do you have a book inside you? A lot of people swear they do. They’ve got a story they’re itching to tell the world in book form.
I met a woman at Borders by the metaphysical book section. After we chatted some she mentioned that God wants her to write a book. Several people I’ve met (not including Neale Donald Walsch) have told me that God—or Spirit, the Universe, angels, extraterrestrials, or “my guide”—wants them to write a book.
Hey, dead people, let's have some creativity-on thinking out there
I just watched part of a movie I found on the Internet where some people die early on, blown to bits in a terrorist suicide bombing. They awaken in a place called Riverworld, which is not heaven, we are told, but more like a wayside en route to someplace else.
This is what gets to me about some movies like this: the people who have died kinda wake up and lament having died. Like, “Oh, we died. Woe are we…”
Well, hello?
Call me Crazy Josh. But it just seems to me that if I can be conscious enough to think, “Hey, I’m dead,” then I wouldn’t actually still be dead, now would I? Dead to me implies a permanent state of no brain activity. Like dead battery dead.
If I woke up knowing that I was dead, I would know (cue the light bulb and make a little tinkle sound) that I survived death. I think, therefore I am undead.
And God said, "Let there be light in my movies!"
Recently I did a blog piece about same ol’ movie plots. I call them movies stuck in Idea Jail because they stay imprisoned in a philosophical jail cell. Avatar, for example, despite it taking place in 2154, plays a lot like Dances with Wolves. I remember chuckling when one of the characters said, “What’s wrong with this picture?” as if that expression had survived 150 years of new slang.
Here I want to explore some movies I would like to see.
I would like to see a romantic comedy (or even drama) where you have a smart female lead who is happily single. She doesn’t hunger for “one true love.” She has great self-esteem and an open heart. She isn’t angry at men and while she’s not monogamous, she has a deep spiritual connection with her God. Her sexual expression is intimately connected with her desire to channel love to heal the planet one heart at a time.
Idea Jail keeps the mind stuck in a death rut
(Disclaimer: It’s a good point here to say that if you haven’t seen Avatar and plan to, you may want to bypass this post until after you’ve seen it.)
Despite what this may seem like, this is not specifically criticism of blockbuster films like Avatar. They’re fine. Rather, as someone who has studied the media for decades, I am acutely aware that much of what I’d like to see in movies hasn’t made it to the big screen. I would love to see movies step out of Idea Jail and break new ground by overcoming stereotypes.
I recently wrote about the nature of conflict in drama, that creating dramas is usually about creating artificial conflicts for characters to deal with. I questioned the long-term impact of a movie-goes, TV-watcher, and book reader mentally digesting the subliminal messages that life is constant conflict.
Let’s talk about this from a law of attraction perspective. If our media does not give us positive, exciting visions, it does not help us create positive, exciting futures. It has been my long-held view that a great service the arts could perform is to provide positive visions that can inspire people. As it is, the formula is to sometimes show happy-ending triumph, but along the way characters are often beaten up something fierce. Avatar is a great example.
I'll take visionaries over snarks
Just fine, thanks.
I am an advocate of hope and change. I remember watching the special program put on by the Obama campaign just before the election. I was leaking tears at a phenomenal rate considering the activity I was involved in at the time: listening to some politician speak.
I can’t recall that a politician ever moved me to tears before Barack Obama did. And not just once. It was embarrassing how easily I succumbed to his message and charisma.
Hope and change resonates with me because I am creative and loving. I want to see diversity and harmony and innovation and inspiration in my country and on my planet.
Even before the election I realized that one of the reasons why I got so emotional during some of Barack Obama’s speeches was that there wasn’t much in all of Televisionland that spelled out visions of hope and (positive) change.
Many miracles don't make the news
This is going back to the basics. When you choose to watch the news, do you have any idea what you are implicitly agreeing to watch?
Essentially you are agreeing to watch what a small group of people have decided is in your public interest to watch. They decide what the news is.
Supposedly, the news we watch and read is about real life. It’s puffed up to be the truth, just the facts. We’re supposed to be more informed as a result of our exposure to it. But if you stop to look at what material you’re habitually ingesting in our news reports, how much of it works as important information to know?
It’s often suggested that not watching the news makes one a current affairs dunce. Other thinkers, especially like Wayne Dyer, suggest that passing on the nightly news improves a person’s mental health.
