Banky For President

Beaver Lake Arkansas

When I was 5 years old I almost drowned in water I could stand up in. I learned how to swim because of that. But I’ve always been afraid of the water.

As my life has become a series of challenges I need to meet head on before I die, conquering the deep is an obvious step.

A gorgeous hunk of a man by the name of Greg Shives, became a certified scuba diver oh so many years ago. He would talk about his adventures and I would listen to him droll on about excitement under the sea and just how cool an aquifer really is. This past June he talked about needing students for a class he was going to teach on Open Water Diving.

I jumped at the chance.

This was an opportunity for me to face this fear head on and to have a little fun doing it. After all, if a bowl of ice cream is life and fun is the hot fudge syrup you pour over it, time spent with Greg is a banana split topped with a mask, fins and snorkel instead of a cherry.

Greg is a wonderful reminder that if you are enormously passionate about something, you’re also incredibly successful at it too. I felt incredibly safe because that cool cat was always around.

Meeting this challenge is not without some struggles. One exercise is to go down about 10 feet and pull your mask off, put your mask back on and blow all the water out the mask using your nose. This is fear personified for me. If I hadn’t technically done it once in the course of the weekend I wouldn’t be certified.

But this process for me wasn’t about becoming a certfed scuba diver, it’s all about conquering a fear. And if we’re honest, we all have work to do. The real certification is the life you’re able to lead because of the challenges you’ve been able to meet.

In our effort to seek truth, we have to put our thoughts and ideas into action.  It’s not enough to just believe something and not incorporate it, is it?  Spirituality is about walking a path . . . YOUR path.

In the book, The Secret, it is argued that the secret to happiness is (and I’m paraphrasing) positive thinking.  Having a dynamite attitude but with no way to express it is akin to having your car filled with rocket fuel.  You CAN run like a bat out of hell but not with the vehicle you currently own.  You have to realize you’re a rocket ready to blast off.  If you continue to think like you’re a Pinto and constrained by those limits, that positive fuel will just sit there and that car can’t really go anywhere.   And you end up  . . . frustrated.  You’re burdened with knowledge but have no way to put it into practice.

Case in point:

I recently had a discussion with someone who was lamenting her recent (and not so recent) bad luck with men. She wanted advice on how she could improve herself as seekers are want to do. She wrote:

“What was your honest, straight-up impression of me after spending time with me? Tell the truth and I promise I won’t get my feelings hurt. Even tell me the “not so positive” stuff. If my feelings get hurt, they’ll mend. Some have said that I tend to come off a little “uppity”. Did you feel that? As far as my looks go….did you think I was too heavy? Tell the truth. I’ll do the same for you if you want.”

I wrote back the following:

 ”Ok.

You have 3 missions to do first.

1. All day tomorrow you need to walk around like you are a 10. I mean a perfect 10. This world has been your dream and it is now your reality. You add value to the world by your very existence. If the world is a contest, you are the prize.

2. When you walk down the street, compliment three people on what they are wearing or on something about them. It could be a waiter/waitress or a complete stranger. It should be no one you know previously. Don’t wait for any acknowledgement. Just ninja compliment and walk the fuck on.

3. Call someone in your family and just ask how they are doing.

Just like the lil green jedi says, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Email me back sunday night and:

1. Give me impressions on what it felt like to be the perfect 10.

2. What were the three compliments.

3. How was the family member?

You can’t email me back until you do these three things. If you try I’ll just ignore it. You think I’m kidding? Try me.

Hugs,

V.”

I didn’t hear from her until a week and a half later and this was her response:

 ”O.K. Mister.

Mission accomplished. Finally. It wasn’t easy walking around feeling like at “10″ so it took several attempts. Yesterday, I finally felt it. I got dressed up, walked around the Plaza and had lunch alone at an outside cafe. I loved the entire day. I had a variety of emotions…including gratitude for just being alive. I felt like I was good enough for anyone and could accomplish anything I wanted. I complimented more than 3 people. I complimented the waitress for being so attentive, I complimented a lady I passed on the street about her beautiful long hair, the clerk at the bookstore for having a nice smile, a man about his shirt, the receptionist at my heating and air conditioning place, a friend of mine for being such a wonderful cook (she sent her husband over with a loaf of freshly baked bread) and several other people. “

So here’s the challenge. Go be a 10 and post your experiences here.  Remember:

1. All day tomorrow you need to walk around like you are a 10. I mean a perfect 10. This world has been your dream and it is now your reality. You add value to the world by your very existence. If the world is a contest, you are the prize.

2. When you walk down the street, compliment three people on what they are wearing or on something about them. It could be a waiter/waitress or a complete stranger. It should be no one you know previously. Don’t wait for any acknowledgement. Just ninja compliment and walk the fuck on.

3. Call someone in your family and just ask how they are doing.

Now go be a “10!”

Thanks to our on the spot reporter, @duckman1221 (think Christiane Amanpour but only hawter), he was up at the buttcrack of dawn and at the Apple Store in Kansas City, getting reaction from all the beautiful people, including @NewMonarch.

Remember to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Chateau Domaine Vedrines Sauternes 2005

Originally uploaded by bankythehack3000

Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines is a great book if you

1. Know a lot about wine.
2. Know nothing about wine.
3. All wine connoisseurs in between

My pal, Zena, wrote a great review here. I’m all excited because #1 on the list came the other day, the Chateau Domaine Vedrines Sauternes 2005.

Make sure you ask before you touch me the next time we hang out.

1. Open Source Spirituality : yes me!  Go read.  Lots of great comments so far.
2. Banky and Paulie : separated at birth?

Howdy! I’m back.  Let’s get back to work, shall we?

Open Source Spirituality is a collaboration of ideas that  educates “seekers”  by giving them a process for seeking truth.  It is a way of looking at the world with a critical eye,  but the process is only as strong as the contributions made by other seekers.   People should know how to question long-held beliefs because only then will those beliefs be truly worth believing.  The most precious metals in the world are made into very beautiful things but only after they are forged in hot fire.

Let the hot fire of ideas govern your beliefs.

Before we begin, understand one thing.  I’m not trying to convince you, in this post at least, that “god” doesn’t exist.  You can figure that out for yourself.  This is merely a process you can use to apply before you accept something as a belief.

Off we go:

2 Thessalonians 1:6-9 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)

“God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power”

Assuming we are reading or hearing this passage for the very first time we can use our previously defined process to put to the test whether or not it should become a belief.

First off, we recognize that everything should be questioned before we deem something worthy to become a belief.  Its not good enough to accept as truth something someone says or has written.  We must recognize that we are smart people and if common sense is a gift from “god,” like compassion or intelligence, then we must apply common sense where it is warranted.  And because beliefs define us to the core of our being, there should be an element of common sense applied.

Secondly, to do that, the purported belief should make sense to you.  If you derive from the passage in Thessalonians that God will reward his followers and punish the non-followers, and you decide to hold that as a belief, it should be because it makes sense to you at some level.

Thirdly, does this belief reflect the best qualities humanity has to offer?  How do you deal with people who feel differently than you?  Do you tolerate those who feel differently?  Is it right or just to punish those who feel differently than you?    Shouldn’t the ultimate authority we refer to as “god” reflect the best qualities in us?  Aren’t they gifts from “god” as well?

Fourthly, if this purported belief doesn’t reflect how you think a challenge should be met, you should reject it as a belief.  Ask yourself what kind of person behaves in such a fashion as to punishing those who feel differently:  Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler?  Is that reflective of your image of “god?”  Does this sound “just” to you?

Lastly, we understand that though we are wise, we don’t know everything.  Is there anything else we can derive from this lesson?  is there something we missed in the initial summation? The beauty of seeking is that you can continue to apply this process ad infinitum until you have the truth you seek.

Thoughts?