Birth. Life. Death.

If we ask 9 out of 10 people today "What is the opposite of death?" the answer we will most likely receive is "life". That's probably not accurate, well at least from a semantic or scientific viewpoint. I'm asking a loaded question to some extent, maybe it's even trickery.

The opposite of death is birth.

Humans are "born" and then we "die". We seem to agree on when a human "dies". Well, within seconds or minutes at least as there is usually an accepted "time of death". We see the last exhalation, the heart stops, brain waves cease, etc... so we call it "death".

There is also a relatively socially acceptable "time of birth", the baby comes out and a nurse or doctor looks at the clock and announces the time of birth, it's written down and is now a fact of some sorts.

Yet, there seems to be mass chaos, fighting and even violence surrounding the subject of Life. If you ask people when life begins there quite possibly could be a million different answers, all based on an individuals' perspective, a perspective they were most likely conditioned to have based on their social surrounding and religious traditional upbringing (or lack thereof).

Really no one knows when "life" begins. We're all assured to never know because there is no answer to the question as it is based off perspective and opinion, normally based on personal or institutional biases.

The problem is that we are really asking the wrong question.

If we do or might possibly come to believe in the theory that no thing in the material world can be created from nothing and subsequently no thing can be reduced back to nothing, then it would appear that birth and death actually do not exist. 

Scientifically, no thing can be created from nothing and no thing can be destroyed into nothingness, everything just transforms. A piece of paper is transformed from water, air, trees, loggers, a machine process, etc... And burning a piece of paper transforms it to energy, heat, fire and ash.

Following that same thinking, as humans, we transform from some things to being "born" and then we transform back to some things in "death".

We are comprised of the same atoms as everything else in the universe. We are all in effect "Star Dust", containing atoms and elements which first existed from the time of the big bang.

We were most likely taught to think "I" did not exist and then magically "I" exist now in time-space from some process. Then "I" die and return to dust? No... there is no magic, no dust, no creating something from nothing. We have always been here in one form or another from the beginning of time and we always will be here in one form. Whether we call it "life" or carbon or anything else is just a matter of words.  

So... The real question of relevance to us in this existence is not so much when does human life begin but - What's the point of this whole human existence? 

My answer is simply to grow, live, experience and love. I like it being very simple.

We are here to grow as we live this human experience. We see that physically, we grow up, become taller, larger and increase in mass. The majority of us grow up emotionally, so most 30 year-olds don't roll around on the floor crying in public when they don't get what they want.

In the 21st Century, we are told we have hundreds of other way for "things" to grow within our lives. We can grow our mind and intellect through learning and gaining knowledge. We can grow our self-esteem through striving and accomplishment. We can grow our businesses, careers and bank accounts through hard work and investing. We can grow logically, morally and ethically with education and spirituality. On larger scales we can grow families, communities, societies, economies, nations and quite possibly soon, worlds.

Interestingly to me, all of those examples follow typical growth patterns and s-curves. There is usually a ramp up in growth which eventually leads to a plateau and then small or large decline over time. We can become really intelligent and then have Alzheimers for example. 

All of those externalilties have a limited range of growth for each of us based on conditions. This could also be called the cycle of birth and death, Samsara in Buddhist philosophy. Just as we grow up and then die, everything around us does the same thing. Everything material is subject to the laws of physics, birth and death and thus, is in a constant state of change.

Stock market goes up and it goes down. If it went up forever, what would happen? Sounds great huh, well if that were the case then we would also grow physically forever... not so good. 

Everything within and without our lives has a rate of growth which is sustainable for a period, then tapers off. Boom and bust, life and death, peaks and valleys... all relatively the same. So, can you grow your business, career, money, family, forever? No, of course not. Everything will have some eventual loss of growth or decline of some sort.

So, if all we are doing with our short time here is focusing on growth in areas of mundane existence, which we know are bound for decline/death, are we all insane? Yes, most of us are insane to do such a thing. I will stand up and raise my hand as being in that camp most of my life. I (ego-centric I) want more years, money, fame, food, appreciation of assets, accomplishments, kudos, atta-boys, growth, etc... and I do not want less of those. Welcome to the cycle of birth and death, enjoy the ride :)

What I have come to "know" is that there are a few simple things I can focus on which actually are not limited in their growth and always net a higher return. Funny enough, they are not actually physical things.

1. LOVING KINDNESS - Can I make a commitment to grow my loving kindness for myself and all sentient beings every moment? YES.

2. COMPASSION - Can I grow my compassion for myself and all sentient beings every moment? YES.

3. JOY - Can I grow my joy within myself and towards other sentient beings every moment? YES.

4. EQUANIMITY - Can I be equanimous with myself and other sentient beings every moment? YES.

I had the great opportunity to speak at my brother's wedding reception in 2009. I spoke about those 4 things being the basis of "True Love", a love with no growth curve, no down turn, no boom/bust, no birth/death, no peaks and valleys. True Love, encompassing those 4 qualities can grow infinitely, which is what we all truly want - a world with more love for ourselves and those around us. 

You could call it God's Love, Buddha Nature, Big Mind/Big Heart, Infinite Wisdom, whatever your spiritual tradition feels appropriate is good.

If you like this, check out my book "Letters to My Son: Choosing Yourself First" on Kindle through Amazon. 

If you want to chat, feel free to email me at douglashilbert@yahoo.com

I Do Not Know Anything

I don't know anything, and for the first time in my life that is not only ok, it is a foundation for my happiness and wellbeing.

I used to know everything, or go to great lengths to pretend to at least. At that time in my life I was afraid, childish, stupid, stubborn, hard headed and either an ass or a coward most of the time. I was right and you were wrong and I would prove it, normally destroying any human connection in the process. Being right was more important than being happy or loving others.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so the result of my egotistical dogmatism was an existential beat down of epic proportion. A great war with intense battles was waged on the forefront of my pre-frontal cortex. And the result - I lost the war and likely lost every battle, along with time I can never recover. Decades of basically useless suffering, but it was the war I had to fight (and lose) to eventually be here, be happy, be well and be free.

My quest for knowledge and information to be "right" was simply a childs' egocentric attempt to frame the world in black and white and eliminate uncertainty and chaos. It was my attempt to control the external world and feel some sense of security. Self delusion seems an appropriate term for what I was doing, as there is no certainty or security in anything.

Knowing something does not give it meaning. I can know the name of a thing and still not understand it. I can name the fruit "orange", but cannot explain how it tastes to you, you must eat it to know the full meaning. The same applies to everything else, which is why I fear we have millions of educated people who know names of things and know no meaning.

I was the kid who had to take all of my toys apart to figure out how they worked. I never put them back together to experience them afterwards, so I knew something about how they worked, but lost the meaning in the process. It's like going to an art gallery and simply dissecting all the rules of art and whatever versus just looking, experiencing and feeling the art.

I read almanacs, atlases, history books, owners manuals, maps, newspapers, really whatever had information. I was good at Jeopardy and played people for money, usually kids with 4.5 GPAs when I was barely a 3.0 GPA and preferred to play sports and whatever else. I knew all kinds of information and none of it had any meaning. My head was full of dates, facts and other relatively meaningless information - which only gave me a overinflated ego that I was "smart".

Being labeled smart was damaging to my growth and evolution as a person. I could simply no longer be wrong because I was "smart" and being wrong meant I was dumb, which was akin to death.

In reality, I have been wrong exponentially more than I have ever been right, if I have ever been entirely right about anything ever. Once I was able to say that (and actually believe it) the battles and war in my head stopped. The most influential person in that process was Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, who simply offered to always ask - "Am I Sure?"

Am I Sure? No. What I have come to realize is the world is 1000 shades of grey. There is no black and there is no white. There is no truth and there is no right. There just "IS" and what I think about it is mostly irrelevant.

What is left is this new found curiosity to know the meaning of things and not just search for the facts, information, "truth" or something just to be right, make myself feel more secure or battle others.

~ Meaning is found through experience and understanding.

In nowhere else is this more profound than in interpersonal relationships. If I can never "know" something for sure, how can I ever say I truly know another person at any time? I cannot. So, to maintain healthy and happy relationships I am constantly seeking to understand and re-understand people as we are not static beings, we are dynamic and ever changing. To love someone is to seek to understand them.

~ Seek to understand, not to be understood. 

If you like this, check out my book "Letters to My Son: Choosing Yourself First" on Kindle through Amazon. 

If you want to chat, feel free to email me at douglashilbert@yahoo.com

Risk versus Reward

Risk versus Reward

All decisions in life come down to risk versus reward. If we do 'x' then 'y' or 'z' may happen and do we like 'y' or 'z' or not? There are 4 paths that I see:

1. If we do not like either, we do not act.

2. If we like y but not z, then we have some internal debate about what is likelihood of either happening and then decide whether to act or not. We really have no clue, but it's nice to have some false conviction we can predict the future. If you are on Wall Street you just make shit up on a spreadsheet, call it "research" and then sell it to others based solely on your complete inability to predict the future as well, plus charge a fee and buy a new Porsche or something. 

3. Sometimes we don't give a crap and just do something without thinking. I have found this has the same probability of success as thinking really hard trying to predict the future (minus all the time wasted thinking). 

4. Or we sit there and just think and never do anything ~ paralysis by analysis or as a mentor once called it = "Mental Masturbation".

What is Risk?

Risk is Potential Pain. 

What is Reward?

Reward is Potential Pleasure. 

Risk versus Reward = Pain versus Pleasure

As humans, we want pleasure and we do not want pain. Some of what we gain pleasure from is hardwired in the brain with releases of dopamine for things such as eating, having sex and exercise. The brain knows we need those for survival and continuing the species, so we get a little hit of dopamine from simple biological things. 

But now we can get dopamine from drugs, chemicals in crappy food, porn, video games, b.s. motivation posters, facebook likes, twitter followers, instagram hearts and other forms of unnatural things. And... science has shown that just the expectation of those things releases dopamine in the brain. 

Dopamine is really the "expectation of reward" chemical, not the reward chemical. This is why the anticipation of a reward is many times better than the reward itself. Also, why we feel down after the high of getting the reward has worn off. We used up all of our neurochemicals anticipating and getting, then we need some "downtime" to restore those neurochemicals.

So, what's next after that cycle? We 'Chase the Dragon' to feel that pleasure again and again and again. At the same time, we are constantly on the lookout for pain and are attempting to avoid it at all costs. It's a hijacking of the prefrontal cortex by the amygdala, the "lizard brain". 

As humans don't like to face reality or call things by their true names, we have developed these cover words of "Risk" and "Reward" to lie to ourselves. Really all we are doing is pleasure seeking and avoiding pain, over and over, every minute of our lives until we die. It's not "good" or "bad", some of it is biological and some of it is delusional. 

If someone is pointing a gun at me, I have an instant risk assessment as being very high, so I act to avoid the potential pain and death. I am attached to "living" and "being alive" so act in a way to protect myself and my attachment to myself. Same for it someone was pointing a gun at my children - I'm attached to them so would want to save them. 

If I am a millionaire, may lose $1,000 in a business deal and then I have the same risk assessment reaction as if someone is going to shoot me, then I am delusional. My attachment to money has become overinflated in importance. 

I've lost every material possession I have ever had, they are all impermanent. I am still here despite all that loss. What I had control of though, was a choice to experience pain and suffering or not, I felt the pain and suffering because I was delusional. My values were "out of whack". 

Here is a simple coin on it's side. One side is "Pleasure" and one side is "Pain". They are both on the same coin, so they are inseparable, we need both to have a "coin". We need both to be a human and live a satisfied and fulfilling life. Too much of either side of the coin and we are at higher risk of unsatisfaction, loss of safety and death. Usually we become out of balance by excess pleasure seeking in America, not an army of insurgents enacting genocide, really we have it good here all things considered. 

Most people think they are risk-averse (good at avoiding potential pain), but studies show we are terrible at risk assessment (future predicting) and really want pleasure. The expectation of pleasure drowns out the voice in our head that there could be potential pain ahead... and then we get married (easy joke there). Seriously though, the anticipation of a reward routinely beats out the anticipation of loss, thus why there are so many people who buy high and sell low in all financial markets. We are emotionally weak at knowing what to do and when, we do not know ourselves well enough to be trusted by ourselves.

The way out of this situation is the be on the edge of the coin, not flipping it hoping for it to land on pleasure and not on pain. That is all we are doing with "Risk versus Reward" and risk assessment, flipping a coin hoping to predict the future. It's a fools game. Just be on the edge and whatever side it lands on you are not squashed by the coin! This is why long-term buy and hold investors make money in stocks (ie, Warren Buffett) and the rest of us lose money. He knows himself and has the discipline to not seek excess pleasure while listening to his voice helping him avoid potential pain. This is why I do not invest in stocks, well it's a con game unless you have a billion dollars, but otherwise I have an exceptionally poor record of avoiding pain and limiting pleasure seeking... So now I meditate and read stoic philosophy, that's all I have found that works. 

As Pain and Pleasure are on the same plane of existence, there is an equal and opposite reaction to them, they are antagonists. Super high, unnatural levels of pleasure will be followed by super high pain (suffering). See above at the beginning. 

I think about being in a new relationship and infatuated with that person (basically high all the time) and then they break up with me, resulting in major pain and suffering. I think of being addicted to drugs or sugar and then I can't get them, not a fun place to be in. I think about chasing money, then going bankrupt. It's all the same roller coaster, I hate roller coasters in real life, but chose to ride one in my head for 30+ years.  

When we are on the edge of the coin, equally balancing Pleasure and Pain, not attached to pleasure and not avoiding pain, the amplitude of the wild swings decreases. I still get pleasure from things and I have a manageable amount of pain which I can deal with in a healthy manner. 

Pleasure is not " good or bad", it just is. Pain is not "good or bad", it just is. Both happen when they happen, the severity of them is based on our attachments, mental constructs around them and our brains' neurochemicals. 

The chart above I would equate with the normal and healthy maturation process of a human, certainly one with a higher level of well being present. If you ever "flatline" and have no pleasure or pain you are most likely dead.

What's the Point?
As usual, there isn't one, I'm just writing stuff to organize my thoughts. This is my first blog since I wrote the book, so getting back into the swing and my writing is terrible again after a break. I broke James Altuchers' rule - "Write every day" and like starting over in the gym, my brain hurts and my performance is weak :) Anyway, a little self humbling (or self deprecation) is always humorous. 

I try not to chase too much pleasure or avoid too much pain. At the same time, I try not to worry about whether I will get all the pleasure I want or avoid all the pain I can. It's basically a  waste of time and mental energy I have found. Pleasure can be found in simple things I can always access with meditation, gratitude, moderation, right view and correct insight. Then if I fall in love or something, well it will feel like it supposed too and I won't be deluding myself with infatuation or craving  instead. That sounds like a good thing. 

If you like this, check out my book "Letters to My Son: Choosing Yourself First" on Kindle through Amazon. 

If you want to chat, feel free to email me at douglashilbert@yahoo.com