Jim Grisanzio

Anyone meditating for a long time knows that it can be frustrating dealing with thoughts. Just as you get all relaxed and present in any given moment in come the damn thoughts like an invading army taking you back to the past or forward to the future, reminding you of problems that need working, fights you can’t help reliving, or pleasures you’re endlessly seeking. This can be difficult while trying to relax. But that’s what meditation is all about: dealing with thoughts and learning how to transcend them so you can explore life beyond thinking. That’s the goal. But it takes time. Decades, actually.

But as I suggested in the previous post, actually focusing on your thoughts instead of the underlying sensations in your body can be a valuable (albeit painful) learning experience. Here’s why: you can better perceive the effects of thoughts on your body while meditating than while in the waking state. All thoughts create corresponding physical reactions in your body and they are obvious while meditating. For instance, take a string of thoughts that piss you off. While meditating you are sitting and calm so you can easily feel your heart race. Your muscles constrict. You sweat. Your breathing gets shallow. You grit your teeth. You can’t feel the stress hormones flooding your body but they are most certainly there if you get yourself all worked up ready for a fight in your mind. But all these sensations are significantly dulled and subtle while experienced in the waking state since you can act out physically. You get up and walk around. You bang the keyboard. You slam the phone. Talk to a friend. Whatever. These actions are distractions for the anger because you rarely notice the profound effect the feelings have on your body in that moment. Next time you get pissed at some email and rip out an angry response check to see if you are breathing. I bet it’s constricted at best.

So, this is the lesson: if you meditate try to gently transcend your thoughts, but at times it’s worth noticing what images bubble up because they are the very same issues you live with all day long. You deal with them by observing them and the effect they have on your body. Again. And again. And again. For years. These observations alone are shocking if you’ve spent a lifetime indulging in thinking. Remember, positive or negative, thoughts are distractions. Just like those physical actions we take to distract from thoughts.

When you practice observing sensations in your body — mostly pain — without judging them eventually you’ll see a lot more going on than you realize. The key, however, is focusing on the sensations themselves and not the judgements about the sensations. The judgements, or thoughts, can teach important lessons but they are ultimately distractions. This is a subtle and difficult exercise because judgements are attractive and they pile up rapidly. But they mask reality so you should’t focus on them to much. If you’re not careful before you know it you’ll be reacting to judgements and not the underlying sensations you need to experience. Over time, though, you can learn to peel back the layers of thoughts to observe reality and then you can consciously influence things by intentionally pushing new thoughts around your body. In other words, you can create judgements and thoughts but helpful ones instead of dwelling on those diving at you automatically and unconsciously. This takes time to master. But even small movements in the right direction are obvious. Get quiet. Breathe. Observe. Deflect. Push. I do this for hours every day.

I love this story: Oak Park, Michigan Resident Julie Bass Faces 93 Days In Jail For Vegetable Garden.

Why not grow some food in your front yard? Forget zoning laws for a moment. They can be changed with a little collective action and a collapse in the local economy. The larger issue is more important. Just imagine an entire block of formally middle class people ripping up their pretty little lawns and growing their own food in their yards — front, back, side, whatever. And then trading with each other throughout the year. No exchange of money. Just trading food for food. You grow some spinach. I grow carrots and corn. The guy over there grows squash and beans and sprouts. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. It’s a great way to build community, independence, and self sufficiency — farming in the suburbs! In fact, I could be wrong but I bet some people way back in history used to do this very thing before we all became dependent on brittle and inefficient systems to distribute resources like food from all over the world. Why not just use your own land?

Now imagine if someone starting growing rice in big wet paddies in the front lawn? Oh, goodness. The local neighborhood association would really get pissed. But maybe not. Rice looks like grass so maybe they wouldn’t even notice.

Stress will kill you. And if it doesn’t kill you it’ll make you sick. Mainstream medicine in the West does a poor job at recognizing and treating stress-induced diseases but the underlying science documenting the problem is remarkably well established. Relax. A lot. It matters. Don’t wait for this research to get into clinical practice because it simply takes too long. For an hour long discussion of this in three separate interviews with video and transcripts see Dr. Gabor Maté on Democracy Now.

Image: Zenkō-ji, Nagano, Japan, 2008

Here’s a lot more from Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh) at The Automatic Earth on Fukushima and Chernobyl: Welcome to The Atomic Village and The Lifeboat Hour (audio). The first link is a lengthy review of the situation in Japan that’s pretty scary at points but substantive as well. It’s well worth a read if you love radiation. And the videos in the post contain some startling information as well. In the interview with Michael Ruppert at the second link Foss addresses the public pissing match between Helen Caldicott and George Monbiot and how the Western scientific community sometimes dumps on inconvenient data outside its paradigm — in this case research from Eastern Europe compiled by Alexey Yablokov and published by NY Academy of Sciences. If you don’t think data can get lost between scientific paradigms just read Thomas Kuhn. Finally, here’s a previous interview with Foss (audio/transcript) on Fukushima.

Image: Mt. Fuji, Japan, 2006

Bill Gates doesn’t seem too concerned about the safety of nuclear power even in the wake of the disaster at Fukushima. At the Wired business conference recently he’s quoted as saying the following: “If you compare it to the amount that coal has killed per kilowatt hour, it is way, way less. When an accident does occur, however, its effects are much more visible. Coal kills fewer people at one time, which is highly preferred by politicians.” Short video clip here.

Translation: John kills more people then George kills but John kills them more quietly. When George kills people, however, more people notice and they blow things way out of proportion. So, George is ok. It’s really John that we have to worry about, not George. Right. That would make a great summary at my next double murder trial. Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson. Which would you prefer?

This is the kind of thinking that leads to power systems so dangerous they actually kill people while we act like it’s simply a cost of doing business. This thinking is also good propaganda because it focuses attention on what technology kills more or less within an existing paradigm while naturally excluding options to replace the paradigm itself. It’s insidious. And effective.

It’s no secret Bill Gates loves nuclear power and he’s investing in the technology as part of an effort to thwart climate change. I have mixed emotions about his involvement given his high profile and access to resources. I have no doubt his new nuclear plants will be safer than existing plants, but I also have no doubt his plants won’t be safe. Safer is not good enough anymore. He criticizes (justifiably) current plants as being suboptimal (upgrades are always required, right?), but let’s remember the industry says the current plants are perfectly safe. Nuclear power has always been safe, according to the industry, yet just one plant, Chernobyl, killed a million people (here, here, here). It’s too soon to tell how many people Fukushima will kill but I don’t want to wait two decades to find out. And I don’t think we should trust the nuclear industry with yet another upgrade when they’ve had such a terrible record in the past. I’ll give Gates some credit, though. His new plants will use depleted uranium as fuel and that’s probably a better use of the stuff than shoving it into bombs as the American military has done in recent wars. Although I wonder how using spent fuel in combat affects the “people killed per kilowatt hour” calculation.

Unsafe at Any Dose, Helen Caldicott, Op-Ed, New York Times: “Physicists talk convincingly about “permissible doses” of radiation. They consistently ignore internal emitters — radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells. They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body, whether from isotopes emitted from nuclear power plants, medical X-rays, cosmic radiation or background radiation that is naturally present in our environment. However, doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, and that radiation is cumulative. The mutations caused in cells by this radiation are generally deleterious. We all carry several hundred genes for disease: cystic fibrosis, diabetes, phenylketonuria, muscular dystrophy. There are now more than 2,600 genetic diseases on record, any one of which may be caused by a radiation-induced mutation, and many of which we’re bound to see more of, because we are artificially increasing background levels of radiation.”

I suppose it depends on how you look at things and your ability to focus on data from different paradigms.

Image: Tokyo, Japan, 2011

Democracy Now: Chernobyl Catastrophe: 25th Anniversary of World’s Worst Nuclear Accident.

Some people say 43 people died as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion and some people say the number is probably closer to 980,000. Right. So much for science being scientific, which is probably the most disturbing aspect about the current Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. For an exploration of some of the issues, see an interesting debate on Democracy Now between Helen Caldicott and George Monbiot. My own view is that science is as political as politics and always has been. You need to do your own research and be careful of those pushing agendas. The banter back and forth is helpful — and entertaining — but nothing is as valuable questioning both sides of a debate. There are never just two sides in a debate.

Since all things nuclear are raging these days — especially in Japan — I’ve been reading up on radiation exposure. What the heck. I know, I know. I shouldn’t worry too much, right? I live far enough away from the nuke plant in Fukushima and the winds will blow things out into the ocean. And besides low level radiation is not that harmful. It’s only a chest x-ray or a flight to New York, they say (and they keep saying every time more radiation is released). Right. Well, I stopped believing that bit long ago. And of course, I certainly don’t believe nuclear extremists like Ann Coulter, who says radiation is actually good for us. I wonder, will Coulter volunteer to help out at Fukushima? Probably not. Well, Ann really got under the skin of Gary Null recently. Gary is a social activist, researcher, broadcaster, and alternative health care advocate. He’s posting an ongoing series of radio programs — Fatal Fallout: The Dangers of Ionizing Radiation — citing a variety of experts questioning the notion that low level radiation is harmless. The programs are sobering to say the very least, and fortunately Coulter’s view doesn’t hold up very well.

So, since these programs didn’t cheer me up much I viewed some documentaries on Chernobyl. I figured some history would be interesting and I came across these two films: Chernobyl Heart and The Battle of Chernobyl. Utterly horrifying. Both of them. Watch them on an empty stomach, though. They are upsetting. There is great debate about how many people died as a result of Chernobyl, but the most disturbing view comes from Alexey V. Yablokov, a Russian scientists who published an English review of the literature that had been written in Slavic languages: Statement from the NY Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (pdf), press conference on C-SPAN, press release, interview. Yablokov puts the death toll from Chernobyl at about a million.

On the good side to all this, if you are not exposed to insanely high levels of radiation such as at Chernobyl, there are actually some interesting things you can do to help protect yourself from low levels of radiation by taking various nutrients. Gary Null talks about these things a lot so that’s what I’m looking into now. He has two programs ( March 18 from about the 27 minute mark and March 16 from about the 21 minute mark) where he goes over about 75 nutrients that have been known to protect against radiation. That’s comforting to know because it demonstrates we do have at least some control over our circumstances even with an out-of-control nuclear industry. This can all be very confusing, though. It’s a medical and environmental emergency, but it’s wrapped in a significant amount of power politics and that’s always a bad combination. Another option, of course, is to just relax and believe the mainstream industry experts and the governments when they say all of this is just like getting a little chest x-ray or taking a quick flight across the ocean. That would certainly be easier. Party on. Right?

I see Janet Napolitano, secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, is out there checking for radiation from Japan: “Just to make sure that everyone remains safe, we are doing screening of passengers and/or cargo if there happens to be even a blip in terms of radiation.” Really? Even just a blip? I’m touched. I feel much safer now that Janet is on the job. Yet I find it ironic that this is the same security official who insists on radiating passengers as they go through American airports — or sexually assaulting them with “enhanced pat downs” if they refuse her cancer “backscatter” scanners. Note that Janet also refuses to subject herself or other members of the Obama Administration to her cancer scanners. I realize Janet says her radiation machines are safe, but I don’t believe her. Her department royally screwed up the configuration of the scanners recently and exposed people to ten times the radiation level. The TSA cancer scanners are not safe, the TSA should not be trusted with our health and safety, and security theater will not keep us safe. For more information on the issues involved with airport security, see Electronic Privacy Information Center on C-SPAN from January 6, 2011

I was looking forward to opting out of Obama’s fancy new cancer scanners at SFO, but for some reason they sent me through the old clunky metal detector instead. I set the darn thing off and had to go back through again. Success! I was clean! Then after I put on my shoes and jacket and strapped on my belt and collected all my crap, I sat and watched for 20 minutes dozens of people quietly walking through the naked body x-ray machines — legs spread, arms and hands held high. No one opted out. Not a single person. Remarkable.

Good article from Richard Senelick, a neurologist specializing in brain injuries, on the obvious dangers of contact sports: Head Games and Youth Sports: Have We Gone Too Far? Hint: you should question — strongly — all those cheering parents, screaming coaches, and detached administrators involved in contact school sports. Your child’s health depends on it, and it’s likely those in charge have no idea what they are doing. I played a bunch of contact sports back in school at Sachem in New York, including lacrosse and football. Not only were those sports a waste of time, teaching me little other than violence, but the coaches were clueless about injuries — especially at the younger grades. The coaches were extremists in every sense of the word, too. It’s scary to think that these people have such power over the health of our kids. For more fun that results later on see dings and dementia.

I work late. It’s perfectly normal for me to be on the phone with people in the U.S. and the U.K. till 4 a.m. multiple nights a week. Sometimes I go to 5 a.m. if I can`t get to sleep, which is rather inconvenient if you have things to do the next day like other meetings or just life stuff. It`s insane, I know, but it`s my reality for the time being. It will change in due time. Anyway, the longer I do this the more I notice some trends. Some bad, some good. Here`s an interesting one that keeps popping up:

Going to sleep immediately after managing or participating in active, intense, and stressful meetings (I call them "hot" meetings) or after dealing with fast breaking issues can lead to some really hairy nightmares. Keep in mind that 9 a.m. in San Francisco is 1 a.m. in Tokyo the next day, so as the Americans are gearing up for action your body in Asia is supposed to be winding down. Over time, this is a jarring experience. Generally, most normal people don’t crash immediately after these hot meetings. They drive home. They go for a run. They take a swim. They eat dinner. They play with the kids. They walk in the park. They catch a baseball game. Watch a little TV. They unwind a bit before bed. Whatever. They don’t just go from work to bed in 1 minute (and, no, checking our email at nite while watching Leno is not work, sorry).

But what’s interesting about this is that when you get through the initial nightmares and get into normal sleep you wake up with a fresh set of ideas about how to solve the problems that buried you in the meeting before you went to sleep — which was just a few hours earlier! I’ve never had this experience before, but he pattern is clear. My subconscious mind seems to be working out the details of the problems while it serves up a steady flow if dragons and murders and other such bloody and graphic fun. And when I get up, I have multiple new ideas for dealing with stuff. I now keep a notebook close by so I can jot down whatever comes out immediately upon waking. Those first few moments are critical, though. Once conscious thinking starts, all is lost and you are simply up.

"We need more police." That`s what Senator Max Baucus said the other day as he laughed at protesters engaging in a little civil disobedience in his Finance Committee hearing on health care — a hearing obviously excluding proponents for a single-payer system. "The committee will stand in recess until the police can restore order." The police restoring "order" is a good example of the power that community organizers face while fighting for change. In this case, though, the community organizers are also professionals working in the health care field, and they represent majority opinion in the medical community and among the American people. Shouldn`t these people be heard instead of being arrested?