For me the Latter Day Saint temple in San Diego is like a fairy tale princess castle. It was a perfect place to be married. Here are a few shots from the wedding.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
A Christmas Delight
For me the Latter Day Saint temple in San Diego is like a fairy tale princess castle. It was a perfect place to be married. Here are a few shots from the wedding.
Knowing Without Knowing
The patient was there in the morning when I arrived. I had a standing appointment and wondered how it would go this time. My feedback from last time had been nothing. He met me with struggled words pieced together between difficulty swallowing. No movements were perceptible beyond facial expression and an occasional sway -- but ever so slight. I was there for an hour session and I did my best. My best was to let go of my expectations and to follow my intuition. A knowing without knowing, what the Chinese call wu wie. What did I do? I had him breathe and follow his breath with imaginary light. Meditation is a powerful key. A smile emerges which tells me that progress is being made. Humanity fills the air when we help another human being -- something Godlike in my mind is something that happens because air and water, time and space express more than ourselves.
Next time was clear. More of the same -- more of what I don't know.
Next time was clear. More of the same -- more of what I don't know.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Five Great Springs of the Body
Materialization is not what most people think it is -- or maybe it is just me. Who knows?
So I was working on a desperate client who had trouble walking on one side, pain in his mid back, opposite shoulder, and could no longer move his neck. I guess that is not so unusual for me. I do get the hard cases -- otherwise someone would crack them in with D.C. after their name. Sometimes you hear a concept over and over and then suddenly it materializes right in front of you. I could see the five springs of the body -- each arm, each leg, and the body itself as being in optimum condition when they bend well. Totally extended or collapsed is a non-working condition. It took me right to the knots. One in the upper fibular bone area, both sides of the mid-back, and finally on the upper thigh of the effected leg. Then reseting a few restricted facets of the neck and he was moving with normal Range of Motion with a normal walk. Tui Na works.
The five great springs of the body can be seen and if you don't see a normal motion then they detect precisely where the defect lies. I like that, a mystery solved. I had him learn tai chi chuan walking so he can make the knees and feet the passive part of his walk long enough for him to recover completely.
I think that most things in life materialize slowly and our understanding unwinds long after our minds have been cluttered up with the information. Mortimer J. Adler said you need to read a book 14 times to understand it. "How to Read a Book" was one of my reads in college but I only read it once and passed by ... I've missed a lifetime of books by that author if you count them up. A 14 year old drop out who discovered reading on the job -- Plato. How great was Plato? Plato wrote down the teachings of Socrates. In college I heard this story of Socrates ... a student asked him if he could help him learn. Plato took him to the ocean and thrust him under the water. At first, the student was compliant. Soon the air was running out and he wanted to breathe. He forced upward but the master held firm. Finally, the student had to breathe and he put all his effort into pushing upward to receive air into his lungs. "When you desire learning like you desire air then you will learn." Now, Adler knew a bit about materialization.
Mortimer died in 2001. His studies in the classics led to a life long quest and a scholarship to Columbia. He eventually became a professor there and was awarded an honorary doctorate for his knowledge of the classics. I think we could all learn a bit from his Common Sense of Politics and his Six Great Ideas. Truth, goodness, and beauty are three ideas we judge by and liberty, equality, and justice are three ideas we act on. Here is his words in an interview:
BILL MOYERS: Six great ideas -- truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality, justice. Why these six?
MORTIMER J. ADLER: One answer, Bill, is the Declaration of Independence -- the document that every American should understand -- and five of those six ideas are in the first four lines of the second paragraph. Let me recite those four lines:
Now, there's a second reason. Three of these ideas -- the first three, truth, goodness and beauty -- are the values by which we judge everything in the universe -- our ideas, our thoughts, human conduct, the world of nature and the world of artistic products. The second three ideas -- liberty, equality and justice -- are the ideas that relate you and me, relate people in society. Their equality, their freedom to relate to one another, their just or unjust treatment of one another -- they are the ideas that govern our actions. They are the ideas by which we evaluate governments and societies and laws.
Unquote -- end of interview.
Mortimer like several other great philosophers of our time became religious in the end. I like to think that the creator materialized in his life. I hope that many other ideas many materialize in all of our lives -- it is our dreams, our imaginations that give us the vision to go beyond the hum drum of daily living. For me, it was five great springs of the body.
So I was working on a desperate client who had trouble walking on one side, pain in his mid back, opposite shoulder, and could no longer move his neck. I guess that is not so unusual for me. I do get the hard cases -- otherwise someone would crack them in with D.C. after their name. Sometimes you hear a concept over and over and then suddenly it materializes right in front of you. I could see the five springs of the body -- each arm, each leg, and the body itself as being in optimum condition when they bend well. Totally extended or collapsed is a non-working condition. It took me right to the knots. One in the upper fibular bone area, both sides of the mid-back, and finally on the upper thigh of the effected leg. Then reseting a few restricted facets of the neck and he was moving with normal Range of Motion with a normal walk. Tui Na works.
The five great springs of the body can be seen and if you don't see a normal motion then they detect precisely where the defect lies. I like that, a mystery solved. I had him learn tai chi chuan walking so he can make the knees and feet the passive part of his walk long enough for him to recover completely.
I think that most things in life materialize slowly and our understanding unwinds long after our minds have been cluttered up with the information. Mortimer J. Adler said you need to read a book 14 times to understand it. "How to Read a Book" was one of my reads in college but I only read it once and passed by ... I've missed a lifetime of books by that author if you count them up. A 14 year old drop out who discovered reading on the job -- Plato. How great was Plato? Plato wrote down the teachings of Socrates. In college I heard this story of Socrates ... a student asked him if he could help him learn. Plato took him to the ocean and thrust him under the water. At first, the student was compliant. Soon the air was running out and he wanted to breathe. He forced upward but the master held firm. Finally, the student had to breathe and he put all his effort into pushing upward to receive air into his lungs. "When you desire learning like you desire air then you will learn." Now, Adler knew a bit about materialization.
Mortimer died in 2001. His studies in the classics led to a life long quest and a scholarship to Columbia. He eventually became a professor there and was awarded an honorary doctorate for his knowledge of the classics. I think we could all learn a bit from his Common Sense of Politics and his Six Great Ideas. Truth, goodness, and beauty are three ideas we judge by and liberty, equality, and justice are three ideas we act on. Here is his words in an interview:
BILL MOYERS: Six great ideas -- truth, goodness, beauty, liberty, equality, justice. Why these six?
MORTIMER J. ADLER: One answer, Bill, is the Declaration of Independence -- the document that every American should understand -- and five of those six ideas are in the first four lines of the second paragraph. Let me recite those four lines:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" -- which is the ultimate good -- "That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."There are five of the six ideas, and the sixth is in another great document, Pericles' famous speech at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War in which he was comparing Athenian civilization and culture with the militaristic stale of Sparta, and said, "We Athenians cultivate beauty without effeminacy." -- There's the six of them.
Now, there's a second reason. Three of these ideas -- the first three, truth, goodness and beauty -- are the values by which we judge everything in the universe -- our ideas, our thoughts, human conduct, the world of nature and the world of artistic products. The second three ideas -- liberty, equality and justice -- are the ideas that relate you and me, relate people in society. Their equality, their freedom to relate to one another, their just or unjust treatment of one another -- they are the ideas that govern our actions. They are the ideas by which we evaluate governments and societies and laws.
Unquote -- end of interview.
Mortimer like several other great philosophers of our time became religious in the end. I like to think that the creator materialized in his life. I hope that many other ideas many materialize in all of our lives -- it is our dreams, our imaginations that give us the vision to go beyond the hum drum of daily living. For me, it was five great springs of the body.
Married to Julie Pickens on December 28th 2008
Yes, that is right! I took the glorious plunge, Geronimo. I remember screaming that as I flung myself down the water spout at water parks till I splashed below in the cascading parade of water.
Some may ask where? The San Diego temple ceremony was done by the Stake Patriarch in our area. I asked two friends to be there as witnesses and they came with their wives. I think Julie had 3 girl friends (2 single, 1 married) and our bishop came with his wife. So it was quiet, unassuming, and quite a world of words by the Patriarch who was in his best form.
Actually our family, although they were not there played a big part of it. Maria had Julie as a Kayak partner. Most all of us save my Dad and Mom Scott were at the graduation from acupuncture school. We all had this delicious salmon together. All of my family helped me in subtle ways to understand how I felt.
My brother Jim helped us stay in Del Mar at a nice hotel where we had an ocean view. I took her to dinner at the Double Happiness restaurant in Del Mar. We had a day of being in Del Mar and La Jolla in some of our favorite haunts.
Julie and I have danced since our first date in November of 2006. I moved into the same city last summer to know if I still wanted to marry her. And we have enjoyed music, choir, qi qong, kung fu, dancing, walking, working out, and getting to know each other for over a year. We have even picked out the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers routines to work on after watching their movies together.
I'll attach some pictures of our reception at the Orchard in Point Loma just before the New Years Eve party. We brought carrot cake and plenty of interesting juices which turned out to be the life of the party. Of course we danced and I sang her two songs. I am wearing this incredible outfit my Mom sent me for Christmas. She wondered if it would fit -- it fit great and the tie was made for it. Julie had a Ginger Rogers look and was a knock out.
The real effort was the move ... I moved 4 boxes at a time and unpacked as I went so the front room became the studio. I even put up the pictures as I went. We had it planned so tightly that the last move was 20 minutes before being there at the temple. Go figure.
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