The Mind of Jason

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Dream – May 2009 (Part 1)

by on Feb.12, 2013, under Dreams, Uncategorized

I am in the city, walking with a young lady, didn’t see who, but someone who must have been important to me. Suddenly, a shot rings out, someone is trying to kill her. Now, I must be part of some law enforcement agency because I immediately have all the streets cleared and blocked off and move to shield her. I call 3 more people over to shield her on the other 3 sides as we move to a building to hide her in.

We find one of these old half run down buildings that you go down a few stairs to get into, I have the building checked to make sure it is safe and secure. When I get back the report that it is, she and I walk to the bathroom to make sure it works. We jokingly say something to the effect that ‘maybe we should just stay her always.’
I send two of the guys off to get food supplies for her and I. After they leave, I lock the doors, now the automatic ones like at grocery stores.

Next thing I know we are sitting around,with candles and a camping stove to cook with, talking. The candles are the only light in an otherwise pitch black building. She starts telling me she just wants to get out of the building. Neither of us was scared. Neither of us wanted to be away from the other.

Other than someone trying to. kill her and having to hideout in this half run down. building, we seem to be happy and content.

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Dream – June 2009

by on Feb.12, 2013, under Dreams, Uncategorized

Priests/deacons holding huge mass in a lecture hall. One of the guys from HS not going to communion because he wasn’t feeling well. Priest storming off because he was pissed. My friend Bruce taking over (he was the deacon). Mass lasting for days. Seven applicants for movie theater, thinking of them as an array with indexes going from 0-6. Puppy. Bath tub with water. Woman (think it was my PM) asking me questions about something I knew nothing about or v little about. Sharpshooter. Gun with multiple settings in middle of ‘church’. Text message in middle of mass, when I get back was when I found priest gone. Something about board games. All in the same room, same people, all in the same time frame.

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Words and Phrases Used to Describe Me

by on Aug.09, 2012, under Uncategorized

This is a short entry for fun. Over the years I have been described in many ways, both positively and negatively. Here is a partial list of them.

Savant
Crazy
Nuts
Insane
Strange
Weird
Twisted
Sick
Odd
‘Oddo’
Demanding
Controlling
Impossible
Idiot
Vibrant (personality)
Quirky (sense if humor)
Caring
Arrogant
Cocky
Condescending
‘Doc’
Delusional
Annoying
PITA

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Wizard’s 11th and Final Rule

by on Jul.09, 2012, under Uncategorized

Wizard’s 11th and Final Rule: The Unwritten rule which must be experienced before true understanding. Everything exists within us

This, as always, makes a lot of sense to me and is very true.

Everything we experience is within us. The events themselves may be external, but how we process them, our emotions, good, baf and neutral are internal to us. It is only the stimuli that is outside our bodies, the rest resides in our hearts, minds and souls.
Before we can realize this fact, we need to experience things.

It is through our experiences that we learn, about ourselves, the world, others and everything. What we learn is again internal, and therefore exists within us. Ultimately, we have full control over ourselves. Sometimes this is very hard, but we can get there, but only when we do not give up. Always deserve victory(wizard’s 8th rule) and fight for yourself. There are some battles you need to fight alone in life. The strength to win them is within each of us.

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Wizard’s Third & Sixth Rules

by on Jul.09, 2012, under Uncategorized

Wizard’s Third Rule
Chapter 43, Page #360 US Hard Cover
“Passion rules reason.”

Wizard’s Sixth Rule
Chapter 41, Page #319 US Hard Cover
“The most important rule there is, the Wizard’s Sixth Rule: the only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason.”


Well these two go together. First, we are saying that passion rules reason, then we say that we can only let reason rule us. What it boils down to is that often our passions our emotions take control of us, but that in the end we have to resist that and think clearly and make decision based on logic and reason. This is especially true for the most important decisions in our lives. When we make decisions based on emotions and feelings, we a lot of times we make poor choices.

There are of course times we can get away with and maybe even should make decisions based on our feelings, but they are few and far between at best. Decisions and actions made and taken because of passions so often cause hurt and heartache. When we are talking about things done during anger the pain is instant. One or both parties suffer from the pure rage, things are said and done that are later regretted, and once something is said it can never be unsaid. It can never be unheard. Those words haunt us for a long time, they can haunt us the rest of our lives. Every time we hear those words in our hearts it reopens the wound. When we make decisions based on intense positive feelings and only based on them, we risk hurt when the feelings come back to a more baseline state.

This does not mean we should ignore our feelings, just that we need to be mindful of them and think things through to make sure we aren’t making decisions just on passion. Passion is a great thing, but it can also be a very dangerous thing. At times it is very hard for a person to be mindful of their feelings. There are times when our mind works against us, when we can’t see past our emotions because our minds tell us something that isn’t real is real, or they tell us that something that may be real is a lot more intense that it is in reality.

We can so often be our own worst enemies. It can be very hard to be mindful of our feelings, but it is something we need to do.

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Why T-Mobile Sucks

by on Jun.05, 2012, under Uncategorized

I have been trying to order one tablet on my account since May 24th. I just got off the phone with the fourth different person today and sixth overall.

I tried online first but it did not go through so I called. The person I talked to said they were going to charge it to my credit card. At some point the order wound up getting cancelled but no one notified me. So I called back a few days later, that is when I found out the order was cancelled. So the guy I talked to said they put the order through again and were going to bill it to my account. I called today to see where the order since I had not seen it yet and it was more than four business days only to find out that order got cancelled – again.

That brings me to today’s journey. It started out with me fighting with the automated system to get a human being. Then I talked to the a person from customer service. They told me I needed to talk to sales. So, I repeated my story to sales. Sales told me that they couldn’t bill my account, but that they would transfer me to customer loyalty because only they could help me. So, once again I repeat the story to customer loyalty. Customer loyalty tells me I need to talk to a supervisor in sales, which I had asked to speak to before they transferred me to customer loyalty. The customer service representative told me the supervisor couldn’t help me. When I got to the supervisor, I once again repeated how pissed off I was and repeated my story once again. The supervisor couldn’t do anything to help or explain why my orders kept getting cancelled.

All this after being with the company for at least five years and my father being with them since the 1990s. He was with them when it was still Voicestream.

I just hung with them after 51 minutes and got nothing out of it but being pissed off and a fight with my wife.

Avoid T-Mobile.

 

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Imperfections

by on Apr.22, 2012, under Uncategorized

We are all flawed, we all make mistakes, we all fail at times, we are all imperfect. In addition, we all have some level of difficulty facing this and accepting it. Most of us if we were asked, “Are you perfect?” could easily answer this “No” and explain that no one is perfect etc. However, when we are confronted with a specific imperfection, a specific “flaw”, a mistake we made, a time when we failed or anything similar we often fight the notion that we made a mistake. It becomes much harder for us to admit that we are not perfect at these times, even if we are telling the person “I know I am not perfect”. Many times we add “but…” and some reasoning as to why it was not our fault, why we did not fail, why the mistake wasn’t ours or why we couldn’t avoid making it. Many times, we are in a state of denial.

Now, this does not happen to everyone, nor is every time we explain why we failed or why something was not our fault an act of denial. There are times when we are not to blame and the fault is not ours, when we are more a victim of circumstance. It is a very easy trap to fall into though, to blame others for your mistakes.

So, why do we sometimes fall into this trap? Well there are a couple possible reasons. The first one is that it is a lot more comforting to us to blame someone or something else for our mistakes. No one likes to make mistakes; no one likes to be wrong. Another reason is society. Society is set up in a very punitive way. If we make a mistake we get “punished” and let’s face it, no one likes to get punished. This fear of punishment leads to all kinds of problems. One of the biggest is the passing the blame of our shortcomings off on onto other people, the other big one is when we try to hide our mistakes and shortcomings. Both of these can happen because we do not want to get in trouble for being human.

When faced with these imperfections, it can have a tremendous impact on us. Normally this impact is a very negative one. Why? To me it is very clear and easy to see why it has such a bad impact on us. When someone tells us that we made a mistake it makes us worry. It makes us feel bad. No one likes to fail or let someone down and that is how we start to think when we are confronted with an imperfection in us or our actions. We start thinking that we failed, that we made the person unhappy, that they are disappointed ore embarrassed by us. That would be bad enough if that were the end of it, but this can quickly spiral out of control. We start expanding the one small imperfection and starts seeing it as it was not our actions or decisions that were the problem, but rather we start thinking that WE are the problem. We start thinking, if I made a mistake with this then obviously I am making other mistakes, I did not “fail” once, I am a failure. Then we start to think, if I am a failure obviously the person pointing out my mistake is not happy with me, if I am not making them happy then they cannot love me, if they do not love me they will leave me. We start believing that they are rejecting us because we made a mistake.

None of us likes to be rejected, as humans, we are by nature social animals, even those of us who prefer to be left alone, ultimately need to someone to accept us and love us. Therefore, when we start feeling rejected it hurts us a lot. The good news is that while these feelings sometimes occur when we are faced with our imperfections, they are normally not true. Often when someone points out our imperfections to us they are trying to help us improve; show us areas that have room for growth and improvement. Just because we make a mistake does not meant that they do not love us or that they are rejecting us.

Once shown an area that needs improvement, we can go about correcting it. Yes, many people try to correct these areas by using negative reinforcement aka punishments. They think that if someone gets in trouble and faces unpleasant consequences for a certain mistake that they will not make the same mistake again. This approach does work for some people, but not for everyone. A good number of people become angry and hurt. Punishing people for mistakes reinforces the idea of rejection and failure. Punishments can have an even greater affect on a person if the person suffers from depression, bi-polar disorder, anxiety or any of a host of psychological issues. Punishing a person can have disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, it is the norm in society to punish instead of finding positive ways to correct a problem. Using punitive measures only leads to people hiding mistakes and/or people doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

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Litany Against Fear

by on Apr.22, 2012, under Uncategorized

The following is a quote from Frank Herbert’s novel Dune:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

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Thoughts on Forgiveness

by on Apr.17, 2012, under Uncategorized

Well, as planned, it is time to write about forgiveness. The last few weeks I have been thinking about it a lot. I think a good part of that is because when I read “Temple of the Winds” over, the rule driving the story is Wizard’s Fourth Rule: “The Wizard’s Fourth Rule, he called it. He said that there was magic in sincere forgiveness, in the Fourth Rule. Magic to heal. In forgiveness you grant, and more so in the forgiveness you receive.”

Forgiveness is an interesting topic, it seems that people find it easy to give or are unable to do give it. Personally, it is very easy for me to forgive someone. Now, most people will say they forgive you, but in reality, they do not. The ‘forgiveness’ they give is often nothing more than lip service. True and sincere forgiveness comes from deep within your heart and soul.

There are a few reasons why we do not forgive people. At times we do not forgive them because we are too angry or hurt, we are not ready to let go, we want to hold it against the person. Usually this is because we cannot admit that the other person is human and can make a mistake.

At other times, we do not see a need to forgive the person, not because we hold a grudge, not because we are angry, not because we are too hurt, but because we do not see things through the other persons’ eyes, in these cases we only see our own point of view. We feel that there is no need to forgive the person because to us they did not do anything wrong, they did not hurt us or make us angry, but not everyone sees things the way we see things. We try to reassure the person that it is ok and that they did nothing wrong. Sometimes this puts the person at ease, other times it does not help at all.

When the problem is the second reason, hopefully in time something makes us see things through the other persons’ eyes. Sometimes it as simple as re-reading a book, such a thing can make a light come on inside, and we come to understand why the other person seeks forgiveness. We finally come to see how things might look to them and we realize the weight, regret, guilt, etc that the person has carried with them. Hopefully, we realize it sooner than later.

The funny thing, when we realize our own failure and mistake, all we can do is to forgive them and ask their forgiveness in return for being so blind and not looking through their eyes.

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We are Not Made to Hate

by on Apr.17, 2012, under Uncategorized

So often people will think it is easier to hate than to love. The truth is just the opposite. We are ‘built’ to love not to hate. Hating requires a conscious choice on our part, to love is natural and instinctual.

We do not need to be taught to love, but we do need to be taught to hate. Think about it, we are built in the image of God, God is the very definition of love – total and unconditional love, so how can it be in our nature to hate?

Sadly society teaches us to hate those that are different. It is society as a whole that has made hatred seem our nature. It is only a very small part of humans that cast this dark shadow on us all. When you are brought up around hate, you begin to believe it to be natural and emulate it.

The more we hate, the more our hearts and souls become corrupt. The more they begin to die. The good news is that all is not lost. It can be a long and hard road to rebirth but with faith in God it can be done. With that faith you do not travel the road alone. He will be there with you. You may not always recognize Him but he is there. His angels may take the form of friends, lovers and total strangers, but they are there to guide and protect you.
I have had my angels over the years and have recognized a few of them.
To love we need only be ourselves. We need to share our gifts and blessings with the world, especially those less fortunate than ourselves.
The caveat is that we cannot do it out of fear of punishment or a desire to be rewarded, but to do it selflessly with the only goal of caring for others and expecting nothing in return.

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