Man Cave: Of sanctuaries and retreats

(A Room Decoration and Demarcation)

It’s been said that the adult male human regularly needs some “down time” after a work day (a.k.a. Cave Time) to rejuvenate, find refreshment, recharge, gain clarity, and so on.

BUT-I doubt–a LOT–that “cave time” is truly a need reserved for the masculine of the species.

As many men will attest, females also enjoy and feel the need to retreat, and find refreshment. For some women it looks like taking a walk alone, reading a book while soaking in a bubble bath, or even not being alone–such as, sharing emotions with a trusted friend or ally.

Whatever this time looks like, it is a demarcated boundary of sanctuary, and vitally important to good mental health, and a balanced life–notwithstanding the spiritual benefits.

My husband doesn’t feel he needs a “den” or a man gym set up in the basement to get his man cave time in. He most enjoys a vigorous bike ride through the beautiful countryside on his road bike. I most like a variety of sanctuaries and refreshing conduits–both with others and without.

It’s not a weakness or a shame to realize you need space, and find your own space routinely (be it physical space, quite down time, mental respite, or beneficial time of social interaction). It is part of how we [all] live out our humanity fully, and how we are better able to best rejoin to loved ones, and others in our work or social lives in the most healthy way. If you don’t alreadly, encourage your loved ones to carve out demarcated time for this human need, as well as maintain your own. Seriously. Put in on the calendar or in your planner. It’s really that important. Be systematic so you stick with it, and keep your appointments with yourself. You will be surprised how much everyone will benefit.

Do you get the “cave time” you feel you need?

What does cave time look, or sound like for you?

Any body know Scripture that encourages ‘cave time’?

I look forward to your responses. Thanks.

Awake in my dreams: Lucid dreaming

I have to do a post about this, esp since it’s fresh in my mind. This morning I have really vibrant lucid dreams. That is, I woke up within the dream, and could control the things I did/decided, and I could consciously control some of the dream’s outcome.

I used to have insomnia as a tween (pre-teen, ages 9-12) and teen. Now, I have trained my mind to fall asleep in usually under 2 minutes. (Much to the astonishment of my spouse, and friends who happen to see it take place.) I usually remember 3-7 dreams per night. I dont’ bother with a dream journal much, because I don’t have several hours to take it all down when I wake up.

If I can’t fall asleep in 5 minutes or less, I tend to be awake for a while. So, I’ve developed some skills to fall asleep. The one I use the most, and the most effectively is counted down from 100. I concentrate on the numbers (number shape and order themselves), and allow my breathing to grow slow and deep. Often I beginning dreaming immediately as I drift off into unconsciousness.

A person can develop this sort of (lucid) dreaming as a skill, much like training yourself to remember dreams. Here are some tips to start remembering your dreams. I also got some quire handy tips on how to wake up a bit better within my dreams from Tim Ferris, who has researched it a bit.

For me personally, I’ve always had a vivid imagination, been highly creative, and highly stimulated visually. Actually, I had always thought everyone had the chance to dream this way. Since I was a little girl I’ve had fantastic lucid dreams, and I would pick *flying* when I would wake in my dreams. This just seemed like the most fun and exhilarating choice, and crashing didn’t happen too often either. (It’s more like bouncing usually.)

Can you wake up during your dreams?

Interesting- Quick facts about lucid dreams here.

For anyone interested in sharing lucid dreams, discussions, or learning more, I started a facebook group page. At Facebook, search my name (Lisa Colon DeLay) and “lucid dream learning group”.

The WHY questions…

It’s quite possible that my parents inadvertently trained my brain to be more philosophical then it might have been ordinarily.

I remember countless times after doing something naughty or foolish, my parents would ask me a daunting question “Why, did you do that?”

I’m not sure what kind of answers they were expecting. I would wonder why they would ask that.

Those answers were far beyond what my child brain could tackle.

Inwardly I would think, “HUH? Well, that’s a good question, I guess. I probably should have asked why to myself before I did it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. How should I know why I did it? Do they know why? If so, why don’t they just tell me? Will there be some kind of quiz later, or something? If they do know why, why did they looked so puzzled? And basically pissed off. Am I supposed to figure it out for them? …..ugh. But, now that I’m thinking of it, I do wonder why.”

I would usually answer, “I don’t know.” Deep inside I would wish and hope the scrutiny would not last too long. (It probably would lead to a “spanking” a.k.a. whoop the daylights out of me.) But, I also thought, if I did know, wouldn’t truthful answers incriminate me? What could I really come up with in all honesty, “because I wanted to,”?

Mainly through the sheer number of inquiries, I developed the feeling that the answer to “why” had importance. I started on a path toward “hack philosopher”…

“Why would people wish to put meat into ball shapes?”

“Why would chewing gum before supper truly ruin supper itself?”

“Why was, ‘because I said so’ considered an acceptable reason for adults to give me, but never good at all for me to reply to them?”

When troubles or suffering would come, I would instinctively ask “why”?

Maybe learning a lot of things would give me these sought for questions. I tried that a bit. (I still love roving around libraries on a quest of discovery.) After a good deal of learning, one day it came to me:

“Almost all the really crucial questions that ask ‘why’ have quite unsatisfactory answers.”

Or, the answers get debated widely, and are rarely agreed on. Or, the “answers” have the kind of complexities that don’t make one feel better about things. At all.

All this preparatory ‘why’ work…for what? Zip. More or less.

Instead of those sorts of questions, I moved on. “What does asking why tell us about us, and why we should want to know in the first place?” That seems like a much bigger question, with the kind of answer that will make a difference.

We want things to make sense. We want purpose and something to believe in that won’t let us down. We want to count on something. Will a concrete answer provide this? It seems most concrete answers only produce more questions. Of course, I was only satiated with pat answers for a short time.  (I do believe I was also trained to understand that challenging  answers was either a lack of faith, or a flaw in character.)

It’s been a new path for me to have a certain serenity that understanding may begin when the intricacies that the why questions remain in creative tension with discovery and mystery.

And so “why mystery?”

For me, it’s about knowing things in terms of relationship, not facts. The facts can be manipulated, massaged, or up for grabs. But, true trust, based on an ongoing and lavish love, surmounts what facts never satisfy.

God is why.

Leave a comment…

It’s the Jumpsuit: A Daredevil’s Life-Evel Knievel

photo by Bill Wolf, 1970s Evel Knievel

Yes, I pretended to be Evel on my bike minus the crashes. A sense of adventure is an enviable quality, although sometimes a compromised frontal brain lobe can complicate the situations with very bad lapses in judgment.

I found this “15 things you didn’t know about Evel Knievel poster design.” Despite the thrills, his life was tragic and sad. That being said, there’s something I love about him. Maybe, in the end, it’s more about the cape and jumpsuit.

Share your thoughts about the man.


Via: Motorcycle Insurance

The small door- update

The irony of the small door

I’m researching gatehouses and “doors within doors”. It’s fascinating! England was sure fortified back-in-the-day!

Do you see a metaphor when you see this visual?

What are your thoughts or perspective?

(This is no quiz; there are no right answers. Just looking for your take on this visual)

Update– p.m.

The visual/sense I got from this door image was unexpected. The metaphor was of the big door being too hefty to push open, but the small door–the less grand–the meager entry point is the truest way in. It’s the humble door, and going inside will require a blow to the pride, or be what some would considered undignified. For growth and progress, the small door is needed. We don’t have the strength for the huge one, but a way  is provided for us,–if we can get to the point of seeing it.

Mystically Wired: A book review

A book to change the way you see God and communicate with him.

Thomas Nelson Publishing, through their poorly-named, BookSneeze initiative, sent me Ken Wilson’s book Mystically Wired: Exploring New Realms in Prayer.

This book promised to hit the sweet-spot of my spiritual interests, and I was not disappointed. Wilson was spot on starting out in his book that our first priority in seeking God and utilizing prayer is to pray for the desire to pray. This often overlooked first-things-first way allows us to receive from God a thirst for him (which comes via God, not us). This step invigorates our longing to communicate and be more aware of God.

Wilson gives a thoughtful and careful look at prayer, and our inherent basic need for interaction with God as Spirit shows us that we actually all pray for peace–peace of mind.

A “mystic” sense of God is not a pickled and preserved static view of a far-off Being, but an ongoing dew-kissed refreshment to our souls that adds richness to our spiritual life, our growth, meaning in life, discovery, and general renewal. It is realizing that God is great, mysterious, unfathomable, available, and quite nearby. It’s the beginning of a deep and nourishing relationship.

This way of apprehending God is a critical aspect of a walk with God. It is also a seminal part of Christian history, faith, and ongoing transformation toward holiness.

As a person who’s spent hundreds of hours studying prayer on the graduate level, and enriching my own walk with God through a rich prayer life, I can truly say, “Well done, Mr Wilson.”

Here’s the product page description from the publisher.

To read samples, find out more, or purchase it, you’ll find it here at Amazon.

ANGER: Venting vs. ?

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Steam pipe, for machines or Cyborgs

Edited from ethoughts weekly 5/13/04

Lisa Colón DeLay ©2004

Letting off steam regularly is fine-- if you're a train

Indulge with me in a short scenario to see if you can relate:

Suppose one beautiful spring evening you sit in your living room enjoying a good book, or something on tv. Outside you hear the sound of adolescent laughing. Mildly amused, you peek through your curtains and see some familiar neighborhood youth tossing several ping-pong balls to each other as they go up your street. You smile and settle back in your chair reminded of the simple but fun antics of your younger days. The following morning you go outside to find your car crusted in egg yolks and smashed shells.

You fume with anger. “How dare they! Rotten kids,” you think. “Those weren’t ping-pong balls! If I had known they were going to egg my car I would have stopped them.” Your blood boils. You fantasize of chucking an egg at those ankle bitters who made your car a target of vandalism. You feel the need for a good vent for your fury. Right?

However, as you approach your car you notice a mother bird in a tree branch high above your vehicle fussing about her nest nervously. Suddenly an egg falls from the nest and lands amongst the other destroyed eggs. You realize the young people had nothing to do with your car’s condition. Does your attitude change? You feel a certain sense of relief, right? If so, what happened to the anger? Where did it go?

I contend that the notion of purging or venting our anger for good mental health is actually a myth, and a destructive one. It seems it rarely is necessary for feeling better at all. We don’t go around like human forms of unopened soda pop that have bounced down the stairs. One crack in the container, and–POW!

The only thing that cools, or adjusts the anger, in the scenario I mentioned, and many others like it, is the change of the mind. It’s a choice, rather than a reaction. It’s a way to see a happening without being emotionally hijacked. In reality, all that is required to alleviate anger is a change in mentality, or a new perception. As one modifies anger, the feeling is consequently neutralized.

I think the idea of the venting our anger as a tactic for good mental health may have been birthed when those burying anger found it coming forth in baffling and unconstructive ways. (The technical term is repression.) The discovery of psychoanalysis was pioneered by delving into the sub-conscious mind; including the newly named matters of “repressed feelings”. If matters are dealt with– pop psychology  tells us– in a proper visible “exorcizing,” we won’t have unexplained, reoccurring anger problems, frustrations, and related psychological disorders. This kind of “repressed anger management strategy” of our era is so intertwined with our culture and norms, we scarcely see it as a recent invention.

Notwithstanding, repressed anger is real and dangerous, like submerged toxic waste. I will dare allege anger buried becomes guilt; and this anger pointed inward (guilt) ferments, and turns into depression. It is also quite avoidable–without ever discharging the anger like steam from a blazing locomotive. These negative emotional features and many others surface because anger isn’t transformed or neutralized. Buried, anger of the past however; in contrast to present-day, situational anger, is not the same matter.

Surely we should attend to anger and not stow it. A constructive, respectable dialogue regarding upsetting issues is quite wise. Unfortunately, what often happens in using venting as anger resolution is we may feel entitled to vent, or ill at ease if this venting doesn’t transpire. This is simply not accurate. In reality, expelling our anger is so often counter-productive or damaging. It can be like throwing a grenade on a comfy campfire. Additionally, we are bound to be angrier people if we rehearse being angry and letting the vehemence rocket rather than changing our perspective.

Next time something deplorable happens we can think to ourselves, “How can I consider this differently ? Do I have all the fact to warrant blowing up, probably not.” This will transform the mind and transport us from anger. We don’t have to rely on the ventilation of anger. Understanding this is truly a victory. We need not be captive, or slaves, to anger. We need not give vent to it, like detoxifying a poison from our system, if we truly resolve it, and more importantly transform it.

If something offensive occurs soon think of it as a chance to practice this principle. I believe it will also develop our strength of character to think this way more often.

Please leave your thoughts about venting, anger, or anything related to this topic.

Is the Snuggles Bear the Stuff of Nightmares?

When you’re gone, Snuggles the  Bear will hover over your sleeping baby, and drape a blanket on her. Isn’t it great to know child care is so simple these days?

I’m sure this commercial was made to be sweet, or perhaps so jolting as to be memorable. Personally, teddy bears rate right behind Chatty Kathy dolls, and right before Sock Monkeys for my childcare needs. Snuggles is really the stuff of nightmares…. or is he?

Have you noticed that it’s not the wisest choice to put words in someone’s mouth.

For example, I highly doubt teddy bears make good babysitters, even under the best circumstances, with the most eloquent, and most intelligent stuffed bears. It hasn’t been my experience anyway. The biggest problem is dialing 911. Their paws usually dial 991. It makes many parents leery. Me, for one.

This is a 30 second commercial of the babysitting Snuggle Bear….cute or chilling?

Can’t the same thing happen in our relationships? Our perceptions place certain expectations or presuppositions that have little or no connection to Reality. How do our wrong perceptions change to be more correct? The simple answer: Deeper relationships, and a fuller knowing of the other.

Doesn’t the same thing happen in theology? (Our study of God, be it formal or folk.) You or I can determine what God is like, or what “he” is up to, but the voiceover won’t really be accurate.

1. The movements we imagine will be stiff and unreal.

2. Our humanity will skew our translation of God.

3. We’ll make determinations about his sovereignty, or attitudes, in ways that probably reveal more about us, than God.

And when all this happens, we make God into our own image. It works best when it’s the other way around. We grow and mature, as we give in to our Creator, and mirror those qualities of love, holiness, goodness, and mercy.

Is there a way to cut to the marrow, and perceive better?

Probably. I believe it stands to reason that when we speak of God, we must begin to understand “him” on “his” terms, not ours. We start with his nature, with God’s holiness, perfection, omni-benevolence, and mercifulness. If it were not so that God is thus, there would not be enough evidence or reason for all there is that is good, and beautiful in creation, and even in us. We bear this image, in part, as does the world designed so intricately by a Supreme Being we only begin to understand.

After that starting point, we continue what must be a humble (and unassuming) path to pray (ask, request) for the desire to know and love God, and to see God as “he” is. God’s revelations abound, if we have the eyes to see. I once was blind, but now I see.

What perceptions of other people, or of God have changed for you?

Anything else on your mind?

I fought the Law, and the Law won.

Today, I contested a citation for breaking a statute: disobeying a posted (Stop) sign. I made a short video showing that the intersection has a blind corner where one risks being hit from behind if one pauses for too long. The officer admitted on the stand the that intersection, which has two Stop signs, is the most ticketed place in the whole township; however, of the two signs, one sign gets 1 out of 20 violations. When questioned, he could not venture any guess for this disparity.

I pointed out, through video evidence, the hazard of this junction, and why this disparity of violations takes place: Drivers wishing to regard the posted sign and obey it, may pause only briefly out of warranted safety concerns.

I lost the case. The $109.50 fine was not reduced.

Reason: You must stop at Stop signs.

As the judge was deliberating in her chambers, the officer says to me, “I remember you. Weren’t you going to school, to a class? And I said you could use this [ticket story] in your class [Theology of Suffering].”

Me: “Yes.”
Officer Myers: “How did that turn out?”
I said, “It went fine. I graduated…from seminary.”
Officer Myers: “From seminary. Oh, okay. Oh, good. What are you going to do now?”
Me: “Ministry. I hope to help people in recovery from drugs and alcohol.”
Officer: “Oh, ppptt, that’s a tough group. That’s hard. Well, good for you. That’s good. Good for you.”

Me: “I see those types of problems as spiritual problems. I think recovery and healing can take root if they start working at a core spiritual level. Then, healing comes spiritually, emotionally, and chemically.”

Officer: “hmm.”

He seemed to lighten up a bit after that.
A few minutes later I was found guilty. $109.50, (I broke a Statute, so I received no points against my license.)

Here’s the court video I presented. (After the session, both the officer and magistrate offered compliments on my presentation. The strangeness of that bit caught me off guard.)

I still contend I did not break the spirit of the law, even if I did not duly pause. My behavior will change henceforth!

Have you ever plead “not guilty”?
What do you think about this case? 🙂

STOP, don’t roll through…

&

~Leave your comments~

Court evidence-Exhibit A

People are Shambolic

This sign is kind enough to give us an accurate bio and caution statement.

Like this sign, we all have sharp edges, but we seldom advertise as well.

Here the main fact: People are shambolic. You are, I am, and anybody else you can of think is too, at least in some way.

I like that “shambolic” is a word. I really do. Words sometimes excite me like a day trip to Atlantic City might enthuse a slots player. When I find a word that’s a good fit, or a new word I’ve never come across, I feel I’m part of a small but effective coup that has just taken back a fortress in Mediocre Illocution Land. I believe that’s somewhere between Middle Earth, Krypton, and the Death Star, but I’m not positive.

Shambolic basically means something or someone that is emblematic of being in shambles.

The cold hard truth is that people are either in the middle of being shambolic, just coming out of being shambolic–in the same manner as a person whose ferocious fever has just broken (quite ill, but just a bit better), or worst of all: one can be a person who is headed right for a shambolic state–whether he knows it or not. Actually, I’m sugar-coating it. Each particular circumstance is just half of it, our inherent weaknesses are most are the other half.

I’m sorry I don’t have better news, but this isn’t sunday morning church… I’m not asking for your tithe, so I have no need to butter you up, or put a little pep rally together. I can just tell it to you straight.

I’m not afraid to say, I don’t think there is a cure for being shambolic, despite how we seem to seek one.

Have you ever known, or have been a perfectionist?

Is this classic denial for a shambolic person? Bingo. Darn, kind of an Atlantic City reference/call back….um, not bingo, um…I mean, yes indeed! It is. Denial is what happens when we haven’t figured out what’s really going on fully, or haven’t had the courage to accept it, and move onward–grow.

But this bit of new is our reality. We are mortal and flawed. (Now don’t act liked you are shocked, you’ve known it all along…)

Be this as it may–We don’t have to just muddle through. Yet, being realistic helps us to grow personally and spiritually.

Here are some ideas for struggling through the human condition:

1. Full awareness/Humility.

2. Regularly reminding ourselves of #1 (afore mentioned).

3. Dependence on God (Higher Power, The Great Spirit, The Supreme Being, or whatever word for The Highest One, you prefer that happens to not be you).

4. Prayer. Meditation. Rest. (They’re all closely linked, so I plopped them in #4 together. It’s efficient, okay?)

5. Unaccounted generosity to others.

Many more ideas remain.

What are some others you can think of?