Put Your Mask On First, Dude

I've been shopping churches. Last week I went to a mega-church named, inappropriately enough, The Chapel. There were about seven million people there, but that's another blog.

What I want to talk about today is the Spiritualist Church. The Spiritualist Church is basically a bunch of mediums and clairvoyant wannabes (or, as one genuine psychic described them: "psychic nut-jobs"), who get together on Sundays and drink weak tea and sing Kum-Ba-Ya and deliver "messages" which supposedly come from the Other Side. I want to say that the reason I go to this church occasionally is that I believe the same thing they believe. I believe in reincarnation. I believe in the continuity of the personality, i.e., that you and me are gonna be you and me for a long time. I believe that there IS communication with other realms that is available to us. I myself have had plenty of prophetic dreams, and I am the least psychic person you know, which is what leads me to believe that communication is possible and does happen.

What I have a problem with is people who are full of shit. Being full of shit is not by any means limited to the realm of Ghostbusters. I have met plenty of doctors in my life who are completely full of shit. In a way, it is almost worse to study for 12 years and be full of shit than it is to wake up one morning, put on a green velvet cape and some Birks, and be full of shit. I have met teachers and college professors who are full of shit. One might almost say they are in the majority. One might almost say, that's why they become college professors, so nobody can challenge them anymore. I remember advising a young friend who was doubting the benefits of higher education to do it, because that piece of paper gives you the right to tell everybody else to go to hell. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

But psychics have no piece of paper. They scorn pieces of paper. That is, the phony ones do. I have known genuine psychics, who went to school and learned to perfect their art. And these people I respect. Because if you accept that something is real, then you accept that it can be improved upon. A natural athlete still needs to train. A pianist needs to practice. And a psychic needs to--whatever psychics do.

So if this seems like a rant against psychics, it's the opposite. The psychics, the mediums, the channels--the real ones--they have shit for jobs. You think it's fun tapping into other people's energy spaces? Let me just tell you that people who go to psychics are not the ones who just won the lottery, who have faithful, adoring husbands in the wings; who have had the best morsels from the smorgasbord of life. People who go to psychics go because a) they are nuts and have too much time on their hands; b) they need help and have been denied it everywhere else. In neither case is it a barrel of laughs to be a psychic.

But there is a big difference between the real and the fake.

Today, I am pointing the finger at the phony psychics and the full-of-shit mediums. They stand there and say things like, "Now, Spirit speaks to me in SYMBOLS and what I see is you standing on a mountain looking at the valley below. Hey, I dunno, it's SPIRIT that's telling me this, and I leave it with you. God bless."

As if to say, "Hey, this means nothing to you? Your bad, dude." Just like one "healer" I consulted with when I was at a nadir with my physical health, who said, "You're not getting better? It's your fault. You know that, right?"

No, actually, I don't know that. I know that I paid you, bitch, a shitload of money on the premise that you were going to help me out. If it was a do-it-yourself gig, I would have appreciated knowing about it in advance.

It's not that I believe wholeheartedly in these people. Once again, the analogy of doctors holds true. Because I was married to a doctor, I see them as the human beings that they are, and not the demigods they pretend to be. If you think about it, every class has a valedictorian, and somebody who barely scraped by. The doctors you will see in your life fall somewhere in between, but you will never know exactly where.

But in this life, ya gotta give 'em the benefit of the doubt, at least the first time. After that, let your "intuition" be your guide. And I mean that. If you have the strong sensation (a la York Peppermint Pattie) that a doctor, or a lawyer, or a plumber, or a psychic, is full of shit, then keep moving.

Doctors have to put in 12 years to have a license to be full of shit. A psychic, on the other hand, is self-proclaimed, and that scares me.

They shamelessly mine the information they already have about people to pretend to be psychically informed.

One example from today: "I see your son. He's in the coffin, but he's not wearing a suit or anything. He's dressed in his normal clothes."

The mother: "Oh no. He sure as hell wore a suit to his funeral."

The "medium": "Oh. Well, he's not wearing it now." Like, my vision trumps your vision because I'm a psychic. That's not just a lie, that's an insult. That's adding insult to injury, because they're playing on the emotions of people who have suffered enormously.

Full. Of. Shit.

And then they preach "sermons" (they all call themselves Reverend This and Reverend That--I'd like to know who ordained them), and these sermons are equally full of shit. The one today had the nerve to pretend that her sermon was "channeled" by some Dude on the Other Side. I didn't figure it out until halfway through. I thought she just had a facial tic, or problems with eye contact, and, of course, that she was full of shit. When I realized she was trying to pretend to channel, I realized that she was even more seriously full of shit than I thought. Because people believe this stuff, and they act on it, and it's wrong.

What you will hear in these places is that Life is an Illusion, that we Need to Detach, and Put Other People First.

This is true, but it is also bullshit. Life is an illusion but it is also real. Like dreams. How many times have you been deeply affected by a dream, received guidance, had a beautiful experience, gotten laid? And it was only a dream but it was real and I bet it stuck with you far longer than the "real thing". I mean, let's face it, sex, in real life, is a fairly mediocre affair. Don't lie to me and say it's fabulous every time. It's not. It's like going to the movies, you go because your friends are going and because there's beer and because you don't want to be left out, not because the movie is so great. But in a dream, everything is so much more intense, so much more real, if you will.

And life is like that. We can say that yes, life is an illusion. Rumi said: Life is a dream. Only the dreamer thinks he is awake. Then death comes, and you wake up laughing, to what you thought was your grief. Or something like that. (Sorry, Rumi folk, can't find the actual quote).

But what I'm saying is that Life is Real and Life is Now. One of the "Reverends" even joked about it, saying, "I'm not heavy--it's an illusion." And without knowing it, she hit the nail on the head. We can look at a problem and say, "This isn't real," and we can sit back and hum and strum the zither and chill out and we can live our whole lives with that ALIBI because that is what it is. This isn't real, therefore I don't need to deal with it.

But if we come to this earth, real or fake as it is, we must have a purpose, right? It's like saying, Oh ok, I'm doing community theatre, what I say on stage doesn't matter because IT ISN'T REAL. But it DOES matter, doesn't it, we all have our lines, the play has a beginning and an end, and the point is, we are writing our own plays. It can end however the fuck you want but I, personally, am a sucker for happy endings. Yes, it's good to keep a PERSPECTIVE. Keeping a perspective gives you the edge. When you KNOW you are pulling the strings, you start pulling them in the right direction. You don't worry about win, lose, draw, because it's just a play. Life is a cabaret, old chum. But I fail to believe that IF this life is an illusion, we are really meant to sit around slurping hoummus and green tea and pretending that everything in the garden is just lovely, and letting our problems flourish like the Green Bay Tree.

The other thing that really pisses me off is this "Put yourself last" dictum. That is completely full of shit. I grew up with that kind of mentality. My mom was always "doing for" other people, and getting strokes because of it, but you know what happens? You throw energy away for nothing.

I ran into this headfirst when I ran up against not one but multiple chronic diseases. All that energy that I had so virtuously flushed down the toilet would have really served me in good stead, but it was gone. No good to me, no good to anyone else, because let me let you in on a little secret: you can't help anyone else. You can't do shit for anyone. You can give a bum a couple of bucks to get a hamburger but that's about it. You listen to people, because they need to talk, you think. And listening costs so dearly in energetic terms. I'm a "good listener" and sometimes I wanna scream. And I want to say, "You think I care? I have 6 fucking chronic diseases, you fucking think I care about your husband and your kid and your bullshit?" But I don't say it, and that costs me energy too. All I can do is avoid. When somebody says to me, "I need a friend," I cancel.

No matter how much I listen, and what great advice I give, those people are not going to change. In fact, it's just the opposite. Listening to people lets them "let off steam" so they can continue with their life just as it is. My listening ALLOWS them to stay the same. So I am an accomplice after the fact. And I am over it.

It's just like married men. Married men don't have affairs because they want to leave their wives. They have affairs because they DON'T want to leave their wives. That third point on the triangle gives them the wiggling room they need to keep a dead marriage alive. If they wanted to leave their wives, they wouldn't need your easy ass to do it. So wake up.

And back to listening. Listening is one of the most labor-intensive activities I know, but it is just an example of all the shit that you do for people that has no payback. It's not virtuous, it's stupid. These people if they see you dying they will not call 911 because they are busy telling their sister what they had for lunch.

So, if I sound bitter, I am, because I've spent most of my life as an idiot. There are people who are born knowing what's what, and there are people who are born idiots, and I am one of the latter. But I am changing.

If you believe that we each have a purpose in this life, then you gotta believe that that purpose needs our full attention, energy, money, love, whatever you want to call it. It's all the same. So if you are trying to build a house, what do you do? The psychics would tell you, with their reasoning, give your money to the poor, to your neighbor, to whomever, and then you are a good person. And then who the fuck is going to build your house? Nobody. But hey, what do you care? Just live in a tent, right? Wrong. Because the poor, as Jesus said, will always be with us. Give your money to the poor, and more poor show up.

You know what they say on the airlines: Put your mask on first. And that is what I want to say to you, i.e. me, the only person who will read this blog. That is the only way to get through life. Put your mask on first, make sure you are taken care of, and then you can look around and lend a hand. Lending a hand is not bad. What is bad is getting yourself in a position where you don't have a hand to lend.

The psychic people will tell you, "We are all One." Fine. And they say, "What you do for someone else, you do for yourself." Fine. So doesn't it follow that what you do for yourself, you do for everyone else?

Put your mask on first, dude.