Latest / Wanzology / Maintenance Of Your Spiritual Condition
Transcript
- Maintenance Of Your Spiritual Condition Bee-bop-bo-bay-dop bah-dop-bop-bop-bee-dop!!!! Hi!! Hello, how are ya? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY. I am your host, The Wanz, coming at you live and in living colour, but you can't see me. How are you? You doing okay? I'm only wishing the best for you at this moment. I'm wishing that your life is the experience you had hoped it'd be. So what's going on in your life? I don't know about you, but I do know that my life is extremely complicated. Meaning. I have to figure out things many, many times a day in order to either complete tasks, start tasks, get through tasks, remember tasks, pretty much everything. And I don't think you are much different. I think that we have more in common than we give ourselves credit. So when asked, “How do you get through all this stuff?”, well it's based on a concept called the maintenance of my spiritual condition. And what does that mean? Well, my spirit is the emotive part of me that everyone sees. I call it ‘myself’ (one word). When people are exposed to ‘myself’ (one word), how I present myself matters. I could be in a bad space and I will present as angry. Even though I'm not angry, I'm more frustrated than angry. It just looks like I'm angry. I don't get angry very often, but apparently when I am frustrated, I look angry. It's very hard to explain to people who have already locked in a perception that their perception is wrong. I'm working on trying to identify the thing that triggers my frustrations, and there are many things that trigger my frustrations as I'm sure there are things with you that trigger your frustrations. Let's start with everybody's favorite, let's start with traffic. You know when you're trying to get somewhere, you're at a stoplight and the person in front of you is stopped because you have to keep the intersection clear, right? Well, the light is green and they're still sitting there not entering the intersection. The light turns yellow, and then they speed up because they figured out that there's enough room for their car on the other side of the intersection. By the time you reach the entrance to the intersection, the light is red and you have to stop. That's the way it's kind of supposed to be. Now, let's say that you're making a left turn and you have to cross oncoming traffic. That person in front of you has not entered the intersection even though the light is green and everybody knows you have to yield to oncoming traffic, this person has decided not to enter the intersection, so when the light turns yellow, they do not execute their turn, which means, you can't execute your turn and you are screaming, hopping mad, yelling at no one except you,the only one in the car!!, “Why didn't you get out there and turn MF?!?!”, frustrating, isn't it? Or let's take another cool scenario. It's rush hour and you have to get on the freeway. You're at the little stoplight that regulates the flow of traffic, and here you go down the ramp and when you get down the ramp, you're looking to your left, matching the speed of the traffic, while also looking for a place to fit your car in, only defined at the front of the line is the person who left before you, who went faster than traffic or was even with a car and decided they would slow down to get in behind, said traffic; which does nothing other than stack up cars on the acceleration lane. The ramp going to the freeway is called an ‘acceleration’ lane. That is the place where you are supposed to accelerate to match the speed of traffic, while finding a place to put yourself in between cars, otherwise known as TRAFFIC!!! Merging! it's a skill!! It's a skill that in Seattle many, many, many people do not possess at all. They’ll get down to the bottom of the acceleration lane and then can't figure out why there's no place for them to merge into. Well, you came down too fast, or they come down too slow and then won't merge because the traffic is faster than they are. They're thinking, “Well, I'll get into traffic and then I'll accelerate…”, wrong answerrong answer!! Acceleration lane, used to match the speed of traffic and therefore provide an easier place for you to enter traffic. Now if you're even with a car, look in front of the car. Look in front of that car next to you. Is there space speed up? Take that space. So you don't have to make the car you're even with slow down. If it's stacked up because ‘someone’, don't know who, decided not to match the speed, look farther ahead, two, three cars somewhere the traffic is moving. Where the traffic is starting to move, that, THAT is your merge point!! Swerve out to the right, accelerate to the place where the traffic is MOVING so that everybody can get on the freeway. Don't just sit there waiting for the cars now stopped in traffic, have to wait for your slow ass to merge!! It's very frustrating. Now, how do you not get frustrated at something like that? You have to do some maintenance on your patience. Patience is the thing that keeps most of us drivers from running people over, having to be satisfied with just a little ‘toot’ from the horn of your car. But if you practiced a little bit of patience, you wouldn't get upset, therefore, you wouldn't need the horn to express your frustration that someone in front of you didn't know how to use the acceleration lane! This maintenance that you could do can be elusive. It can be difficult to find so that it's available to use when you need it. So how do you remedy this ‘lack of patience’?, well you know you're gonna get on the freeway, right? If you know you're gonna get on the freeway, you know that there's probably going to be a car in front of you because there's a stoplight on the acceleration lane, it regulates when you can go. So once you can go, what are you doing then? Hmm? Looking at your accelerator? Changing the station on your radio because you don't have a modern radio that's connected to your steering wheel, you can't change stations that way?, or are you looking to your left to see where the traffic is? Which do you think would be the best thing to do? I'll pick, looking at the traffic to see where I'm gonna fit in and I have to either speed up or slow down to match the speed of the car I would like to merge in behind. Now, if you don't make it obvious that you're signaling slowing to go behind the car, you know what they're gonna do? They're gonna see you coming down the ‘acceleration’ lane, and then they have a choice to make. Do they slow down to let you go in front of them, or do they speed up if there's room, ro they speed up so that you can feather in behind them? You don't know. This is where the ‘rubber meets the road’!, no pun intended. If they aren't sure what you are going to do that makes them unsure and BOOM, we have a problem. We have a time waste problem. Traffic, kids, anything that there's an expectation of other people, other creatures doing a certain thing that you expect that's bad, okay? Having that expectation will lead you to frustration. But every day what I do, I try to spend like two to three minutes, eyes closed, feet on the floor, deep breaths, reminding myself that I'm not the only one on the planet. I'm not the only one in my condo complex. I'm not the only one on this earth and people have things to do so that they can ‘people’ correctly, which has nothing to do with me, so I will choose to stay out of their way so that they can go on about their business ‘people-in’ like they feel like it. Do you think that works in a lot of other situations? I suspect that it would. Traffic is just the, uh, the most common. But what if you're younger and you don't drive? You're still gonna need patience. You're gonna have to wait in line for something. Maybe you're waiting in line at school to get lunch. Maybe you're waiting in line at school to go to class. Maybe you're waiting in line at school to get out of the rain and into the building. Patients will be involved. If you don't have patience and you get upset, you got another problem, you definitely will have another problem, because someone will come and ‘regulate’ you. So do you understand what your spiritual condition is? Your spiritual condition is that part that everyone sees first. How are you presenting yourself? Are you looking with a scowl on your face? Are you looking with a grin on your face? Are you looking with a bright smile on your face or somewhere in between? You control all that stuff, but you gotta pay attention. I mean, it doesn't mean much that people are always looking at you. If you know WHY they're looking at you, people are gonna look at you simply because they're not sure how they're supposed to present, along with they don't know if they know you, you're a barometer for somebody else, so that they can exercise patience. So that they can, I don't know, adjust their attitude to match the level of the attitude in the space that you both are in. It's very difficult. It's even more difficult when you're not paying attention. So the next time you go to a party and you're with your friend, and your friend knows everybody, and you don't know anybody, when they get through the doors like, “HEY, I can't, I'm so happy you came. I'm so happy you came!!!”, and you say, This is my friend WANZ.”, and I'm like, not that excited, don't take it personally. I'm trying to gather what the room is like so that I will know how to behave. I won't be crazy and off the hook 'cause no one else is. And I won't be a stick in the mud because no one else is. I'll be somewhere in the middle. Whatever I get from someone, like the person I'm being introduced to, I will give back. So if they smile, I'll smile. If they don't smile, well, I'll probably grin because they need that, OBVIOUSLY!! Every person, in my opinion, needs to be more familiar with the physical characteristics of water. Water always finds its own level. Water always goes wherever it wants to go or needs to go one way or another. Two examples, first is the Grand Canyon. A lways had water in it. Every day it went the same way and after millions of years, it carved the canyon. Water is always inside of your car if the temperature outside and the temperature inside are at certain levels. Water, and I don't mean steam and I don't mean ice, I mean water, ater always finds a way. Just like humans, find a way. If you are aware, you can always find your way. Everything leads to something. Everything comes from something. But do you ever stop and think about where you came from? Where were you yesterday? How did you behave yesterday? How did you present yourself yesterday? How about an hour ago? These are clues. These are clues into how you are going to get through what's coming. What's coming, you may ask? More of the same. More of the same what? L-I-F-E, life. Life is gonna keep coming. Your chance to be a part of life is gonna keep coming, like I say, and Get Lucky, “Chances will keep coming sure as the sunrise every day You can choose to sit and watch 'em pass, or grab what's yours to take…”, but you’ll have to do something. Opportunity may knock on your door, but it's not gonna come inside. Your opportunity may not be within arm's reach. You may have to move a little bit. Patience is a virtue, they say. I think it's way more important than a virtue. I think it's right up there with gravity. It's a law. A lot of us break the law all the time, or at least that one. Maybe patients should be required. There should be some training involved, because you're going to need it, whether you're in the car and have to go to the bathroom, you're not gonna go in the car, so you gotta wait. Or you're starving and you're at the end of the line of the drive through, well, you're not gonna run inside and go behind the counter and just grab something, you have to wait. If you're standing on the corner, it could be pouring down rain, but, it's the red or orange person or the hand looking at you saying it's unsafe to cross, so you don't. Patience. There are a lot of things that you're gonna have to wait for, get used to it. Look inside during your run of it so you can understand what your head's thinking. Because if your head's like mine, it's going 500 places all at the same damn time, and you're gonna have to pick one. Not in my head, your head. Everybody's going through the same thing at the same time. Maintaining one's spiritual condition, sometimes it is not only a daily thing, it can be an hourly thing, it could be a minute thing. God help you if it's a second by second thing, 'cause that means you're in some serious dookie, but it's all on you. If you blame somebody for your circumstance, that's not cool. Just like you ain't got nothing to do with nobody else, they really don't have anything to do with you. So the phrase, “Oh, ‘so and so’ made me do it.”, yeah they physically put your hand and this and that, and did all those…no, that was your choice. Be accountable. Remember? Either you win or you learn, you never lose. Ever. But only if you have that second one, if you learn. And all of us are learning, so let's be patient, okay? You gotta wait sometimes for that person to actually enter the intersection, wait until they think it's safe, and make their left turn. If they're not doing it fast enough, that's on you. They don't know you, you don't know them, remember? Thanks for turning me on, and most of all, thanks for giving me a shot and listening to my perspective. I mean I may not have it all right for you, but I can tell you we think about the same things more than you could possibly believe. So if I'm doing this patience thing, if it's on the inside of the ears, we're probably doing the same thing, just a little bit different. Maybe I'm doing corduroy and you're doing denim. Maybe I'm doing a hoodie and you're doing a button down, but we're doing the same thing. So if you'd like a break, give somebody a break, okay? I will see you metaphorically speaking next week. Take good care now.