I’m a creature of philosophical thought.  I can’t avoid it.  I have always spent a lot of energy pondering life, “the truth out there” and our true nature.  Maybe it’s been a lot of wasted time and energy.

In this blog, I have already argued some pretty strong (biased?) and generally unpopular philosophical positions.  In fact, I have lost friends who will  not condone my view of life.  So be it.  I hadn’t written “philosophy” in several months.  The reason is that I’ve been consumed with doubts.  Those doubts have not really subsided much, but it’s time to write.

On Monday, I was having a conversation with a few friends.  We meditated together and we got to the topic of our “true nature”.  And suddenly, I asked a question I had never asked myself: does it really matter what our true nature is?  Does philosophical thought really make that much difference?  If so, why or how?  For some, the answers may be obvious.  But not to me right now.

For years I have believed that our true nature is “the intelligent animal”.  This was articulated in my post following the book by the same name, “Sex at Dawn“.  I cannot say that this has changed in a meaningful way, but in a way it has been enhanced and not necessarily for the better.

Let’s stay with the intelligent animal for a minute.  Is the intelligent animal really the gentle, cooperative, loving kind?  Or are we inherently selfish, deceitful and violent?  As I understand it, the archeological evidence is mixed.  We are hunters by nature, so there is an inherent undercurrent of violence in our genes even though it may be very suppressed.  Even if we go to the last 10,000 years of history as sedentary and agrarian, we as a society continue consuming meat extensively, which requires killing of living creatures, in other words, violence.  So there is that in our nature.  Dare I turn on the news any day now?

On the other hand, we see expressions of love and gentleness all around us as well.  It’s everywhere if we look hard enough.  Starting with the incredibly profound experience of motherly love which can last decades unabated by conflict, abuse and disrespect.   Yet many mothers can “stick with it” no matter what.

I would like to believe that our true nature does go back to our hunter-gatherer days, as romantically represented today by isolated cultures such as the famous bushmen of southern Africa.  But then, we also have the last 10,000 years of history which we cannot ignore.  I have no doubt in my mind that those 10,000 years represent a critical change in history and we cannot escape it.  We are agrarian, sedentary, urban, possessive, individualistic, in a way that we probably were not for the previous 200,000 or maybe 3,000,000 years.  Where did that come from?  Is that pure coincidence?  Was it the inevitable outcome of climate and development?

For the past 9 months, I have been immersed in “Ancient Aliens”, the TV show, the books (Zecharia  Sitchin), the Youtube channels, you name it.  With that, come along a lot of “conspiracy theories”.  It becomes very confusing.  What is the truth?  There is irrefutable evidence that “something strange” has gone on.  I have seen it with my own eyes and touched it with my own hands in the magnificent perfect gigantic stones of Perú (Cuzco, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley).  The History Channel TV show is replete with fascinating physical evidence.  I learned a lot through it.  But then if that’s true and our history is not what it seems, then what else is true?  Are we being visited by “aliens” now?  Does the government know and cover up?  Is NASA another Hollywood studio (i.e., is space travel a lie)?  Is the earth flat?  Did Paul McCartney die in 1966?  I recently read about a study on gullibility which showed that once you believe one conspiracy theory, you are much more likely to believe in more.

Well, “the truth” is out there and it’s probably somewhere in between the crazy list of the prior paragraph.  Which takes us back to Zecharia Sitchin, Ancient Aliens and creationism vs. evolution.  Something strange happened 10,000 years ago.  And then it kept happening after that as well (the last 300 years!!!).  There is something in our nature that has had “divine” or maybe “design” elements to it.  I cannot say it makes us “special” but it does impact the course.

So I cannot avoid believing that our “true nature” is the intelligent animal, supercharged with specific knowledge provided by non-conventional, non-linear sources.  Maybe those sources are in the purely spiritual realm (i.e., divine inspiration) or maybe a very physical presences (i.e., the Annunaki literally conversing with humans) or a blend.

Let’s say “the truth” involves the Annunaki in some way.  And let’s also say that the bible intersects the story of the Annunaki.  Is the god of the old testament Enlil?  Or Ninurta?  Or maybe even Marduk?  I’ve been the reading the bible from beginning to end and the truth is that it’s not a flattering story.  It’s a story with a lot of violence, war, forced relocations, “re-accommodation”, where the theme of unflinching adoration for a jealous and technically powerful god who hates the image of the golden calf.  Sounds a lot like the bad-tempered Marduk in Sitchin , despising the Enlil clan, represented by the bull.

The Annunaki have a lot of different characters, ranging from the loving and noble to the zealously single minded in power and control.  That’s also who we are today.

Sitchin’s stories of the Annunaki are very mundane.  They are people with a lot of technology, they live a very long time but they also die.  A mystery to me which is not treated at all in Sitchin is the spiritual nature of the Annunaki.  By that what I mean is their relationship to the divine but rather their relationship to the spiritual world.  There is a lot of description in the bible of god communicating with prophets through dreams.  Do the Annunaki have a physical presence and also have a direct control over spiritual “space”?  This opens up a lot of profound questions that I don’t think we can even begin to fathom.

I have delved into the “supernatural” ever since I was a kid.  UFO lore fascinates me.  Ancient aliens fascinate me.  I have trekked around past lives, reincarnation, regression out of body experiences, you name it.  But as I go along the way and get passionately immersed in something, I generally end up asking myself, “so how does this matter, how does this change my life”?

I have no doubt that our nature is a very mixed bag of devilishness and sainthood.  Nothing really new there, but it’s important to constantly remember as I try to feel holier than though.  I am also endowed with the possibility to access knowledge and wisdom beyond the natural reality.

Ultimately it doesn’t change a thing if the earth is flat or Paul McCartney died in 1966, just like my life is no different if the landing on the moon we saw on July 20, 1969 was really staged in a studio in Nevada.  How on earth would I really know the truth?  But does that change the fact that when I wake up I see my wife next to me?  Or that I have cheese and fruit for breakfast?  Or that I walk the streets of Manhattan in the morning as I commute to work?  None of that changes whether the truth is conventional or outrageous.  Life is just the sum of my perceptions, choices, words, actions, feelings, etc.  Life happens behind my eyes.

I have been through a 5 month writing hiatus.  Many things going on. Lack of inspiration, lack of energy, fear, doubt, I don’t really know but I was just not in the mood to write.  Maybe I thought I had already said everything I wanted to say.  Can that be possible?

A dear friend has encouraged me to take to the keyboard again.  People read me and find it useful, controversial, worthwhile.  So here I go again.

I just reread my August post “On Suffering“.  That is one of the central themes that has surrounded me the last several months.  It’s parenting.

Yes, I have continued suffering through the uncertainty of the outcome of my kids’ lives.  Will they thrive or will they wilt?  How can I help them?

I remain committed to love and counseling, with very little discipline and anger even controlling my most boiling instincts to be (verbally) rough sometimes.

A few months ago, my 15-year old snuck out of the house in the middle of the night.  We caught her shortly thereafter.  Not worth going into the particulars.  What’s important is that over a period of 3-4 days after that, anger, shock disappointment, gave way to a beautiful glow of love.  I was suddenly entering a realm of curiosity, trying to understand her, to put myself in her shoes, to see the world through her eyes, trying to sense her own suffering, her own quest.

In many ways, her “quest” reminds me of my own as a teenager.  I was many times on the edge, experimenting, doing crazy things to feel “alive and worthwhile”.  I don’t sense my munchkin is trying to live up to peer pressure.  It’s her.  She wants to experiment.

Clearly there has been some level of depression and bullying of some form going on.  I don’t think any teenager escapes it nowadays.  My line has been to say “if you define yourself by what others think of you, you’re screwed.  You have no control.  Define yourself by how you feel about yourself, not through the eyes of others”.

My wife and I don’t really see things eye to eye.  She very desperately wants to be disciplinarian.  It’s her instinct, it’s what she learned and lived through as a teenager herself.  But she has become more comfortable in deferring to my judgment and following my lead to be loving, curious, inquisitive.

We have the “rule list”, the “limits that won’t be crossed”.  I have no idea if they are being respected, but my munchkin says she is sticking to them.  It is never 100% possible to prove that someone is being truthful.  You can easily prove a negative by example.  But proving a comprehensive positive is only in the realm of math, not of human experience.

I choose to believe her and I am trying to trust my unclouded instinct, my perception.  How are her speech, her motor skills, her emotional content, her language, her character, when she comes home from a party or hanging out?  That’s probably more meaningful than tracking her on Find My Friends.  After all, no matter where she is, good and bad things can happen.  In fact, the worst things can happen in your own backyard without even noticing.

I observe her smile a lot.  She likes having Daddy close and being able to talk to him.  I think she feels supported, protected, even loved, and no matter how “big and independent” she wants to feel, I sense she still needs that.  There is still a little scared girl inside the body of this young woman.  Very mature for her years, for good and bad, very cerebral and daring.

There have been many times in her 15 years when she has literally driven me angry, insane.  But the real discovery after she snuck out the window, was coming to terms with my own heart and rediscovering how much I really love her, like the day I saw her come out of Momma’s belly.  Words don’t do it justice.  She is my dear darling daughter.

Change is all around me.  I can feel in in my bones, in my mind, in my surroundings, in the news, in the air.  We fear change.  Yet, absence of change is death.  Absence of change is absence of creativity, of our rightful application of unbounded free will.

A dear friend of mine just told me about the 4 principles of Hindu spirituality, which I find totally on point relative to change:

1. The right person comes at the right time.  Without new people in our lives, without change of some form in our relationships, we remain stagnant.  New people bring new ideas, new words, new sensations, new feelings.  Sometimes they actually help us change our old relationships!!  Every person we don’t know, or that we have already known, becomes an opportunity to connect and a fresh agent for change.
2. What happens is the only thing that could have happened.  How wise in an Eckhart Tolle way.  No regrets, no looking back, just staying in the now and accepting “what happens”.  Remember, we build our lives and our happiness not around “what happens” but around how we feel and we respond in light of what happens.
3. Whenever it starts, it’s the right time.  I have plans, I have ideas.  Yet, it’s not the right time.  When we think and project into the future, when we live on expectation, we are accelerating our own time.  I need to stay focused on my next baby step and whenever change starts, it’s my right time.
4. When something end, it ends.  There is no change without endings.  Sometimes it’s a simultaneous new beginning.  But we cannot cling to the past, to what has been.

I don’t know what will happen with and after the election on Tuesday.   But it’s a momentous time.  Change is in the air.  And change is in me.

My dear brothers and sisters, Doctor Conde wishes you the most profound and meaningful change that will make you the best you that you can be.  And whatever happens on Tuesday, happens and it’s the right time.

I have been suffering for days.  My mood has been extremely volatile.  Oscillating between intense pangs of anger, bouts of mind-numbing fear, prolonged interludes of unabated sadness.  I have barely expressed it although a few people know what I’m going through.

My sweet 15-year-old munchkin is going through early stages of potential anorexia.  Just a few months ago she was a tad overweight. Being a weight/food nut, I talked to her a lot about it.  Now, my words may have contributed to her detriment.

How does this get started?  It happens so fast and you don’t even notice until something happens.  In her case, it was the swim trials.  Had a very hard time keeping up in spite of being a consummate swimmer.  A few days with gramps in Mexico didn’t help much…  Poor eating, exposure to altitude, little exercise.  Came back in poor form.

My suffering is mine and I need to remain very clear about it.  What am I to do as a dad?  I’ve already talked to her till I’m blue in the face about the dangers of what she’s going through.  We talked about the Karen Carpenter story, showed her charts (she’s still within a normal BMI but 10 lbs less would basically put her on the verge of being hospitalized), arranged a nutritionist, new pediatrician (yes, at 15 it’s still the pediatrician) and potentially arranging therapy.  But it’s so difficult for her to even see that she has a problem…

We have talked a lot about personal accountability and responsibility.  I may die inside but ultimately she is not in my hands.  She is in her hands and her hands only.  And actually I believe that the more her mother and I try to control her, the worse it will be.  I’ve read that “weight management” is yet another way of exercising independence in light of controlling parents.

What to do?  Let her be?  Give her the tools and the advice, the independent “consultants” and hope for the best?  I’m not sure there’s another better way.

It’s so hard for me to believe that one simply cannot see oneself.  That a slim 100 lb body looks fat to the beholder.  Yet that’s what all the literature talks about.  How to change that perception?  Is “talking therapy” enough?  Is information?  Is pasting a “112 or bust” poster in front of her bed an incentive or just another annoying imposition from freakish dad?

I was a boss for a long time before I became a parent.  I was never even too sure I wanted to be one.  So I played along.  When you’re a boss, you probably have some control.  You give direction, set goals, measure outcomes, compensate, hire and fire.  Not so with kids (particularly teenage kids!!!).  They are well along on a road to independence and they’re full, whole beings who have no choice but to be responsible for themselves.  Who can watch over a 15 year old all the time?  Would you even want to?  Would it help?  Probably not.

I love my two girls dearly and right now beyond the anger that her attitudes and responses may prompt in me, I see no other way but to be utterly, completely and unconditionally loving.  My words may help and I will remain true to myself in what I say to her.  But I am inclined to believe that it’s the glow of love from her parents that she needs most.  Regardless of what’s going on: growing pains, peer pressure, general cultural disposition, neurosis from critical/controlling parents, a dad that’s hammered eating habits too much, an actual physical condition causing her stomach pain that blocks her desire to eat, whatever it is, my best bet is to be loving.

But in the end, the outcome of her situation is solely in her hands.  We are each fully and totally responsible for ourselves, even kids.  After a while, parents become little more than coaches, cheerleaders, therapists, sponsors.  Certainly, we don’t own them and cannot control them.

Yet I’m still in pain.  The dangers are too real.  The outcomes all but uncertain even at this early stage.  In racing, once a car hits the wall, the driver becomes a passenger, takes the hands off the wheel, feet off the pedals and watches the outcome.  Little more to do here other than giving her all the resources she needs.  And a lot of love…

The classical music scene in NY tends to follow the school calendar.  So summers weren’t a fertile season.  Thank goodness for Lincoln Center.

This year I am overdosing on their chamber series (which has now concluded) and then the Mostly Mozart Festival.  I will attend every one of the offerings, so that’s a lot.

I stopped going to Alice Tully Hall after a horrific performance of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio by Wu Han, one of the directors of Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center.  After several years of hiatus, I returned last year.  And I have to say that she has done a terrific job of selecting music and musicians for the summer series.

On Wednesday, the grand finale was Dvorak’s Piano Quintet.  It had been a while since I had felt myself totally transported to ecstasy in music, but this did it.  What an energetic piece and what performance.  Having heard it many times but never live, this was a goose bump heart shaking experience.  The first movement left me breathless with its tempo and energy, the subplots, the sharing of lead by all the players, the interweaving of themes.  Then, the second movement is one of my recent favorite meditations going into 3 different and unexpected themes.  I can go deep under and then my mind starts dancing with the third theme, but then it all goes back to recap the beautiful opening theme to end it.  Third movement, another delicious dance.  Thankfully the fourth brings is home with some serenity.  Otherwise my heart would have exploded.

It had been a rough day but I just smiled, closed my eyes and let go.

Back in the 1990s, I read Zecharia Sitchin.  He died a few years ago. His work was a little dense but I loved it.  Recently and for no apparent reason, I’ve been thirsting for his writings.  So I have indulged, going back to old and reading a few new things.

Sitchin has been debunked by a lot of people.  They may be right.  Who knows.  What I find compelling about him is that he is meticulous in documenting his sources and doesn’t go into a lot of speculation.  He is just a scientist, an archeologist, trying to make sense of what he thinks he’s reading in ancient relics.

An expert in ancient Middle East archeology, he has “read and deciphered” thousands of clay tablets unearthed throughout the Middle East, Egypt and more and representing thousands of years of records from kings, priests and others.  There’s also a fair amount of writing arguably authored by “them”.  A fascinating and kinda comprehensive one is “The Lost Book of Enki”.

Recently, a dear friend of mine lost her partner to leukemia.  She is devastated.  Being a fully present and centered person in her daily life, she is in crumbles today.  “Why?  Why?  Why?  How could something so horrific and painful happen to such a beautiful person?”  “What am I supposed to do with my life now?”  “What does this all mean?”

After reading a lot of Sitchin and related topics recently, I have been trying to figure out “what it all means” myself.  Particularly, in light of my liberal cultural philosophies I have laid out in this blog and the firm belief in our ancestry as the tribal hunter gatherer determining our basic nature, I am now at a little bit of a loss.

To summarize Sitchin, he has made sense of the myth of creationism and has reconciled it with evolution.  Quite a feat.  If what he says is true, and that’s a big if, then it all makes sense.  That’s why I “almost” want it to be true.  But if it is, it is also a sad conclusion and one that leads us to the inevitable place that says “Why?  Just because”.  “What am I supposed to do now?  Nothing new.  Just live day by day because there is no purpose and nothing makes sense”.  Pretty existentialist.  Should we all march down despair lane towards an inevitable spiritual and emotional death?  The choice is yours, ours.  For now, I stick to my plan to be the best Doctor Conde I can be every day.  Channel light and love just because selfishly it feels good to me and I revel in seeing others being filled with light and love as well.

The “Anunnaki” landed on Earth 450,000 years ago.  A homo-sapiens race from a distant planet called Nibiru.  They came to exploit gold.  Technologically advanced, ethically and emotionally lacking.  Spiritual??  No clue other than their belief in a “Creator of All”.

Enki, the chief scientist of the mission, crafted “primitive man” by genetically manipulating African primates (Homo Erectus?  Neanderthal Man?) to become bipedal slave workers with sufficient intellect to follow directions and fingers suitable for fine motor skills.  This worked for the most part.

But then Enki, seemingly one of the “good guys with a heart” among the mostly ruthless bunch, also seemed to have quite a sexual appetite.  One day he decided to impregnate two different “primitive girls” and voila, Adam and Eve, “civilized man”.  Many of the Anunnaki followed suit.

So this is the perfect recipe for current racism.  How much Anunnaki blood do we really have vs. “primitive man”?  Hmmm.  This could turn into a disaster.

In preparation for the upcoming biblical deluge, which happened 13,000 years ago, Enki advised his son Noah (yep, another Earthly fling for our father Enki) what to do and gave him the plans for a “submarine”.  The other Anunnaki thought it was the greatest opportunity to let humanity die out since we had become so numerous and pesky (“too loud”).  But Enki saved Noah, saved us…

After the deluge, the Anunnaki changed venues to America for their gold mining operations.  Seems like a more gentle and tender side (or faction) of them came here.  In the old Middle East, they decided to give the “civilized man” an actual “civilization”.  And voila, Sumer, Egypt and all the subsequent kingdoms of antiquity.  The Anunnaki then became “the gods”.  Quite an ego.  A lot of exploitation.  What during hundreds of thousands of years had been slavery to exploit natural resources now became slavery to go to war on behalf of the horribly infighting Anunnaki.

Following military debacle, disunity, wars of succession, nuclear blasting, the Anunnaki decided to leave in 500BC and poof, gone they were just as they had come.

And how about Jesus?  Any Anunnaki connection?  Some writers seem to want to believe that.  It would round up the scene nicely.  But not Sitchin.  He doesn’t believe in it.  To him, Jesus was part of the hysteria arising from the expectation that “our gods would come back”.

Quite a story.  Syncs up with the bible nicely.  Would be “an explanation” that jives with at least part of the archeological record.  Also jives with the “ancient astronaut” theory that explains so many things from antiquity (anyone seen the perfectly carved huge rocks in Peru?).  Is it true?  That, dear reader, is for you to decide for yourself.  I doubt we will have an actual Anunnaki show up on NBC nightly news any time soon.  But who knows.  But if it is, the consequences would be enormously profound, wouldn’t they?

That’s all for today, my “civilized man/woman” brothers and sisters.  Something to ponder for today…

Some people believe that there are only two possible feelings/states for us to be in: love and fear.  Maybe we can also be in total numbness but that’s another story.  Let’s indulge and assume that love and fear are it.

The 36 days of obsidian mirror exercises suggested by Sergio Magaña have been an incredible journey of discovery.  I am on day 29 and intend to stay with it till the end in spite of a hectic travel and work schedule.  I have had a lot of intense emotions while immersing myself in the exercise of staring into the mirror and making my image “disappear”.  Deep breathing and hyperventilating help getting in the mood.

My most common reflex has been laughter.  I have laughed a lot at myself the last 29 days.  I look at myself and see my folly, my foolishness.  And that’s refreshing.  It has not been a journey of pain. In many respects, it has been a journey of fun.

What’s surprised me tremendously is how much I have connected with fear.  Not exactly that I have experienced fear while looking at the mirror.  Rather, it’s more like becoming aware of a memory of all the aspects of my life that relate to fear.

When I look at my reflection in the mirror, what I see is that I have spent a lot of my life in fear: fear of looking bad, fear of not being loved, fear of being wrong, fear of being judged, fear of being poor, fear of being sick, fear of being lonely, fear of being ridiculed…  It runs very deep and is very recurring.

Therefore, I have played a lot of hands in my life with safety in mind.  Risk aversion.  I of course cannot take any of my past back.  And neither do I think I am going to fly to Vegas tomorrow to try my hand at gambling.

The greatest fear is probably to be seen exactly as I am.  “What if they really discover who/how I am?”  That means I have lived through a lot of shame.  A lot of that shame is contained in this blog in one way or another.  Starting with sexual abuse in childhood and feeling I “allowed and participated”.  Going through a lifetime of trying to find love in women to feel “secure and comforted” while constantly experiencing a huge sexual drive and recurring attractions that I now know I perceived as “dirty”.

I have to confess.  Sometimes I even felt this fear of “being discovered” at work when I was learning new things.  People would probably describe me as a very competent professional but at times I even doubted and feared that aspect of myself.

The purpose of the exercises with the obsidian mirror is to empty ourselves of the negativity we bring within by returning it to the mirror.  That’s why I’ve laughed a lot at my own folly.  Then, we can replace the void with beauty and authenticity.

I am a competent respected professional.

I am loved.

People can feel good around me.

I am a hot and horny guy and (some) women love that.

I am creative.

I am happy.

I feel love in my heart.

I create every day anew.

And you dear reader, what do you fear??

Who’s not familiar with “The Four Agreements“?  Don Miguel Ruiz did a fabulous job of popularizing these simple and profound guides to life.  I think about them often and find myself caught in the traps of not following them.

Sergio Magaña is a lovely man.  He’s funny, incisive, laughs a lot and tells it the way it is.  He also claims to be a very practical man.

I had an opportunity to attend two seminars by Sergio when he last visited New York.  Absolutely loved them.  Although have to say that the audience was a lot colder and subdued than my typical experience with seminars on spirituality in Latin America.  Maybe it’s just a reflection of New York.  Maybe I was colder myself.

The first seminar was on dreaming.  But not on recall or interpretation.  But rather dream work, manipulation.  The concept behind it is the idea that our life is a reflection of our dreams.  So instead of being a spectator letting our subconscious do whatever it wants with our dreams, why don’t we become active participants and guide our dreams more consciously?  Had never thought about it in those terms.  Always felt a “victim” of my dreams.  But don’t we feel victims of a lot in life?

Nothing Sergio suggests is an easy fix.  It requires perseverance and muscle.  But being very practical, he did give us a blueprint of exercises to follow daily to develop the appropriate psychological muscles.

Sergio and Don Miguel Ruiz are shamans of a very particular Mexican lineage that they would probably call “nahualism”.  It’s shamanism based on a perception of reality that very much resembles Erwin Laszlo’s Akashic Field.  We are simply a reflection of a broader all encompassing reality.

The obsidian mirror is a beautiful tool.  Obsidian seems to be a rock that our ancestors used extensively going back maybe millions of years.  It’s a shiny black volcanic rock that is not so difficult to work.  Shaped as a cylinder, it becomes a perfectly regular mirror that allows you to peer deep into infinity.  It’s a portal to the Akashic Field.

Sergio’s seminar on the obsidian mirror was a guide to 36 days of self improvement.  He swears by testimonials of his pupils who have cured the incurable and changed around their lives.  It’s not easy and takes a lot of perseverance.  I’m now on my sixth day and loving it.

The concept is actually very simple and powerful.  First, we need to get into a trance-like state by breathing deep repeatedly.  Hyperventilate let’s say throughout the whole process in increasing degrees of intensity.  Then, at each one of the 13 steps, the idea is to look deep in the mirror, see ourselves just as we are, in increasing degrees of themes and introspection (“my stories, my perceptions, my feelings, my sexuality, my habits”) with a particular focus on what’s wrong and problematic.  Seeing yourself every day simply to say “who’s the fairest of them all” doesn’t help at all.  But once you’ve peered long enough, then with muscle manipulation of the eyes, you can actually “dissolve” your image.  You don’t see it in the mirror any more even if you’re staring right at it.  All you see is “mist”.  Then at this point, close your eyes and breathing deeply, you return all those problems back to the mirror, to the vacuum from which they came.  It’s another take on getting back to the “zero point”, to Deepak’s “pure potentiality”.

I love this.  And I think it came at exactly at the right time in my life.  The first few days, I have smiled a lot at the mirror with a profound urge to laugh at myself saying “yep, that’s me, in my foolish glory”.

Will report back when the 36 days are done.  New muscles.  New habits.  Maybe new healing.  Maybe even me my psoriasis will be gone!!

I have just returned from a spiritual retreat where we focused on character flaws.  Where to start?  How to distinguish from all the possible culprits?  According to “the system”, my main flaw is my rigidity, my modular view of the world that allows me to have a radical position on everything.  I am impatient, intolerant, angry, when reality deviates from my models.  So I pretend like I am a very deep person and go into my philosophical musings of which there are many in this crazy blog.  I would probably want to be a counselor one day: I could not hold back my opinions on how things “should be” for my clients.

We focused quite a bit on the lighter side of life as well.  It’s very refreshing.  These retreats are a microcosm for an alternative, kinder, more present, loving and spiritual world.  The quality of interaction is quite endearing.  Doesn’t quite get me to the level of emotional ecstasy that my shamanism and crystal work classes do, but it is ultimately pretty uplifting.  A very clear opportunity for learning and growth.  However, they also involve some pretty hard, in-your-face, introspection.  I think one of the missions of this “system” is to make absolutely sure that people like me are reminded that we are not so fabulous in the grand scheme of things and we deserve some reality checks.

The naked truth, dear readers, is that I am not so deep.  In fact in many respects I am quite shallow.  I don’t intend to be so but I just am.  Let me explain.

In my post on sexual energy, I discussed how it arises by interaction.  But I also mention that I get aroused by imagery.  It actually goes much further than just images and therein lies my shallowness.

As a human male, I am convinced that we are programmed to be attracted to very specific shapes in females (and likely vice versa).  Do I need to list them?  There’s all the elements of roundness and symmetry, size, firmness.  Then there’s movement and flow, along with color and decoration, which is why I am not only attracted to the female body but also to the way it’s presented via clothing and makeup.  I get attracted simply by observing geometrical shapes and their presentation and flow, including appropriateness of contextual behavior (such as seeing a woman walk or sit).  Anyone with any doubt about this can google “fetish”.  Can I get attracted to a female without the right geometry?  Dear readers, the honest and sad answer is probably “no”.  Evolutionary psychology explains it as being programmed to detect the right characteristics for procreation and gene preservation.  The geometrical signs are just visual indicators of good fit.

I am a fortunate man in that the range of what’s actually attractive to me geometrically is  pretty wide, unlike (apparently) many of my friends who narrow their range to a torturous self-imposed limit.  That has throughout my life given me the opportunity to “appreciate beauty” where others don’t see it.  That element of shallowness is actually a blessing.

So once the geometry is right, which is probably 90% of the evaluation material, what else is there?  What are the other determinants of attraction?  They are probably shallow intangibles we don’t even think about, such as quality of speech and smell.  That just leaves out licking people to decide if we like how they taste and groping them to make sure we like how they feel to our touch before we’re attracted but I’m sure there are ancestral societies that have gone that far.  And that leaves our capacity to be sexually attracted at the mercy of our senses.

There’s no avoiding it.  As spiritual as we want to be, sex is a very physical act.  And even though “the most important sex organ is the brain”, that brain is perceiving physical attributes first and foremost.  Perception comes through the senses.  Let’s be honest dear readers, fellow human women and men.  Which one of you would like to have sex with a fellow human who’s 3 ft. tall and 600 lbs?  Or emitting the nice aroma of rotten eggs?  Or shrilling at a high pitch that will make your dog keel over?  Or whose skin is as delicate as an edgy tin cabinet?  Or whose lips taste like hydrochloric acid?

My series of “spiritual retreats” is pretty much done.  That’s actually too bad.  Something that is a little different about these is how they blend meditation and buddhism with gestalt psychology, which connects pretty directly with sensual and sexual expression and freedom.  Some of the exercises get very steamy.  There’s a clear opportunity to experiment with attraction.

I loved this retreat.  I threw myself into it with gusto.  I unleashed my playful sensual child.  I came to realize that I have been very focused on reining in my wounded child and letting the responsible adult rule, while I have not let the playful sensual child come out.  That child is shallow.  It dwells in the senses.  It dwells in geometry.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days.  I was appropriately depressed in unison with the title.  But I have been horrendously busy at work with no time to spare.  I have also been enjoying what I’m doing and my mood is not somber.  I am in fact quite content with myself, well centered, happy.

Still, I have been navigating thoughts of inadequacy.  Books sometimes have a tremendous impact.  When something resonates with me, I internalize, make it my own.  You have probably already observed that in the numerous book references at Doctor-Conde.com.

Dear readers, how many of you feel you’re alien in your own worlds? How often do you feel you don’t belong?  How often do you lose sense of what’s “home”?

I have been away from my place of birth for 28 years.  Other than my own nuclear family of wife and 2 girls, I have no extended family nearby.  I don’t talk to my siblings that often (to a large extent my choice as well).  I have taken distance from many friends and extended family as well.  As time has gone on, I have closed doors and said goodbye or just not called back in a while.

Here in New York, I have few people with whom I regularly “socialize”.  I think that by “socializing” I mean spending time face to face visiting and doing things together, even helping each other out.  Things like knocking on someone’s door just to visit for a while.  Or helping someone cook a meal, play chess, plant a tree.

Even though I have a country club membership, I don’t have any “friends” or “buddies” out there.  I do have many dear friends, mostly women, with whom I relate regularly, mostly by phone or in writing, sometimes getting together for a lunch or dinner, but not in a very traditional sense of “socializing” as I described above.  I wouldn’t just knock on anyone’s door for a visit or to see what they’re up to.  A silly example: if I were to move a block down, I can’t think of any “guys” I would call to help me move.  I used to when I lived in the “old country”.  I used to when I was in graduate school in Atlanta.  Now, I know I can call and pay somebody…

I write these things not to elicit your pity but rather to be descriptive and make a point.  The point is that I’m neither from here nor there.  I’m not from anywhere.  Maybe it has something to do with being a stranger in a strange land.  But maybe more profoundly, it’s the way adult life unfolds in urban/suburban western civilization nowadays.  Things change after college.  When we settle down and create our “families”, we close the doors and look inwards.

Does this matter?  Should I sit down and cry?  Should I take up golf and start “making nice” with the guys who regularly play the rounds at the club, talk about sports, politics, money and business?  I don’t think so.

I had already mentioned Stephanie Coontz in my prior post “Marriage, the Secret Files“.  I have been reading Stephanie’s latest release which is a new edition of a book she wrote in the 1990s: “The Way We Never Were“.  I’m not quite past the mid point and it’s a little heavy reading.  But the gist seems to be that our infatuation with marriage and the nuclear family are recent creations of cultural imagination and not our historical or natural state of being.  Maybe our natural state of being is “socializing”.  I wonder what the ultimate punchline will be but I suspect that there’s something to the effect that we’re designed to be in “tribes” or broader networks of interdependence than just the nuclear family.  I firmly believe that and that’s what’s wrong with me today: I don’t really have that network of interdependence or tribe, really.  I sort of have it at work where I work in pretty broad teams, but that’s a very limited punctual spectrum.  I don’t have someone to help me move, unless I pay them.

Years ago I attended a spiritual retreat where we focused on “ideas for a new economy”.  At the time, I sat down and wrote an outline of what a “new economy” or maybe even a “new world” would be like.  But I think it’s probably more appropriate to call it a collection of items that help explain “what’s wrong with me”.  Rereading it recently, I’m pleasantly surprised to see how well it aligns with my current philosophy.

Here it goes:

Assumptions

• We are in a “New Age” of spiritual awakening with different values than those experienced in the last 10,000 years of human history
• The “New Economy” refers to an economic ideal consistent with the value system aligned with the New Era

New Age values

• Humans are spiritual beings
• Humans form an interdependent social community
• The human race will survive and continue to evolve for the foreseeable future
• The goal of spirit is to merge in harmony with all other spirits

Human Nature

• Humans are primates
• Our natural environment is the hunter and gatherer band
• It involves living in groups of 20-30 people who constitute an “extended family”
• We are not built for the “nuclear family”
• We are built for geographic diversity
• We need diversity so we need to expand our “tribes” to include new people we meet along the way
• Private property is not natural since we are naturally nomadic
• We are programmed to change landscape
• Primates, like all mammals, have a system of feelings and impulses with the following objectives:
  Preserve one’s life
  Preserve the life of the group
  Preserve the life of the species
• Humans are part of a community of life on the planet

Current Status of Human Reality

• Our world today is the result of the transformation of human culture from hunters/gatherers to agriculture and sedentary lifestyle 10,000 years ago and then to industrialization 300 years ago
• The world today is primarily individualistic and based on the  nuclear family
• We are not built for today’s world
• Dissonance between our nature and the world today:
  Individual property
  The nuclear family
  Monogamy / polygamy
  Male chauvinism
  Sedentary lifestyle
  Routine and boredom (for lack of change of scenery)
  Longevity
  Diet
  Sleep patterns
  Sex
  Distribution of work vs. play
  The anonymous collectivity

So how do we cope?

• We are spiritual but spirit must respect our nature
• The spirit must kill the ego that propels us toward individualism
• The way to kill the ego is going inwards, seeking the center, living in the present
• Killing the ego helps us be better collaborators and “tribespeople”
• The only “sacred law” is free will
• The spirit is creative and expressive

The New Age

• A way of life that reflects the values of the new era
• What does this mean relative to social organization?
• We would be better with
  • Less traditional nuclear families
  • More “communities” or mini-communities
  • Sustainability and self-sufficiency
• Focus on education
  • Understanding our nature and spirit
  • Much more focus on spiritual practices (meditation, healing, etc.)
  • Respect of human nature and life on the planet

The Current Economy

• Capitalistic in most of the world with communist pockets
• Communism is based on ownership and overall state government
  • Overall violates free will
• Capitalism is based on private property and profit maximization
  • We must recognize that capitalism is responsible for the economic prosperity we enjoy today
  • But at a high cost in terms of human charity and social hidden costs such as pollution and waste of resources
  • What is good for the individual is not necessarily good for society
  • The government has to be a referee and provider where there are vacuums
  • E.g., without the government it would be difficult to have highways
• Profit maximization is not evil; it’s a means to allocate resources
  • Society invests capital in projects with high return
  • Explicitly performance measured in monetary terms

The New Economy

• Capitalism?
• Explicit recognition of costs and “social” benefits
• Role of government to incentivize collaboration

So there you have it dear reader.  My blueprint that explains what’s wrong with me and how to fix it.  Maybe generations ahead.  But today, all I control is myself, my words and actions.  Seems like we’re back to free will as the driving key principle.