Up Your Consciousness! …by Greg Tamblyn

NPR just did a piece on a new sport that its organizers hope one day to bring to the Olympics: competitive yoga.

Competitive Yoga? Of course! Yoga’s all about the ego, right? You wonder why nobody thought of it sooner. I can see it now. Grandstands full of blissful spectators chowing down on tofu dogs, carrot juice, and No-Doz. Cheerleaders in sexy leotards shouting mantras. Jane Fonda calling the action with color commentator Dalai “The Un-Judge” Lama. Aging tennis players, ice skaters, and pro wrestlers switching sports for new careers. Vegas loving it. Huge streams of new betting revenue. Celebrities involved. Hot new shows like “Yoga With The Stars” and “American Yoga Idol.” Kids and adults wearing the jersey of their favorite yogi. (Yogi Berra as spokesperson?)

Oh baby, this is only the beginning. A whole New World of Sports has evolved. Instead of the X-Games, these will be the ∞ Games. The mind reels at the possibilities…

The Prayer Put: You have to pray for the most people in 5 minutes. (The people have to actually feel it, strapped to polygraphs so we’ll know.)

The Meditation Marathon: Who can go deepest? (Up-to-the-millisecond electronic progress reports on the giant video scoreboard from EEG machines. Like radar guns in baseball.)

The Chanting Relay: Whole teams of monks from competing monasteries vying to out-tone the others. (In case of ties there’s a “Sudden Life Tone-Off.”)

The Levitation Jump: One for highest, one for longest. (With weight divisions, of course. Like in boxing. And you have to stay in the lotus position.)

The Healing Racewalk: Get an invalid off crutches and walking before your opponent. (Potential healed persons will have to be in possession of a valid handicapped parking permit. To prevent fraud.)

The Salvation Sprint: Save the most souls in 5 minutes. (Potential saved persons must be from Hindu, Islam, or Jewish faiths. Triple points for atheists.)

And the big finale: The Enlightenment Decathlon. Total score from all the competitions. (God judges this one personally.)

And of course, everybody gets a medal. Everybody wins. After all, it’s only fair.

I think there’s a good song idea here, so stay tuned. (Which reminds me of the hilarious Fred Bogert song, “I’m More Non-Judgmental Than You.”)

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn, Motivational Humorist and occasional stretchy person

1 Comment

Picture, if you will, an enchanting arboretum brimming with colorful flowers and other bright growing things. It’s a glorious sunny autumn day. A bride and groom are surrounded by admiring friends and family. A sacred ceremony is about to unfold for two loving people. It’s also, coincidentally, the 799th anniversary of Rumi’s birthday. Music and poetry are flowing from the loudspeakers. It’s a perfect wedding in every way.

Except for this: one of the Rumi readers is Patch Adams.

Here’s how it goes. A Russian friend starts things off with a powerful love song which nobody understands, it being in Russian, but which moves everybody to tears by the passion of the performance. Other musicians contribute songs. Inspiring selections of Rumi poetry enliven the proceedings.

About halfway through this idyllic ceremony, Patch gets up to read. He’s dressed, as always, in full technicolor clown regalia, with half of his long gray hair dyed blue. If you saw the movie Patch Adams, you begin to understand the force of outrageousness that Patch is. (Remember how he mooned the crowd at his graduation?)

Patch is tall (6 feet 6), so when he stands to recite, I start to adjust the microphone up to his mouth. He asks me to leave it aimed at the middle of his chest. He then launches into an emotional reading of a 30-line Rumi masterpiece (a translation by Coleman Barks), of which I will reprint only the first five lines here:

Love has taken away my practices and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating no strength but yours, but I couldn’t.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
But who can stand in this strong wind and remember these things?

As soon as the line about the “strong wind” comes out, Patch (or some unknown accomplice) triggers a piece of poetic license hidden in his chest pocket: an electronic whoopee cushion. Suddenly we’re serenaded by a long, loud, and tonally impressive blast of flatulence, fully amplified and resounding through the arboretum.

Some of us laugh, some don’t, and pretty much everybody looks shocked. Especially the bride’s relatives from assorted small towns in Iowa. After the tittering dies down, Patch waits a second then continues reading. Not content to leave it to chance that anybody somehow missed what just happened, the whoopee cushion erupts three more times during the poem.

Those of us who know Patch chalk it up to Patch being himself. If you invite Patch to be in your wedding, you expect the unexpected and take what you get. Those who don’t know him, I have no idea what they think. I’m reasonably sure it’s not what they signed up for. I’m also certain they’ll be talking about it for a long time. Especially when they forget to take their Beano.

Patch is a dead-on personification of the archetype of the Fool. The Fool’s job is to shake us up. He flings us into new perspectives by blasting us out of our comfort zones, our preconceived notions, our common attachments and habitual responses. The Fool reminds us that what we perceive as universal order is always able to morph into chaos at any moment. God is a magician with a sense of humor. Laughter is a healthy response to the burst soap bubble of our expectations.

The Fool — the Trickster — has a long, historic tradition in hundreds of cultures. The Hopi have their Sacred Clowns, who are allowed to disrupt even the most holy ceremonies with their unruly and sometimes funny behavior. (Not every time, of course, but periodically.) St. Francis used to walk around naked in public. Rumi offended dogmatic religious authorities by dancing and whirling in the markets, spouting stream-of-consciousness poetry about God as Love. The medieval court jester spoke dangerous truths to the king in jokes and riddles. The Japanese Kihune pokes fun at the overly serious, at greedy merchants, and at self-obsessed Samurai. Tom Sawyer, Brer Rabbit, and Leprechauns all have elements of the Trickster.

The Navajo have a wonderful tradition called the “First Laugh Ceremony.” When a baby is born, he/she is watched over constantly by a member of the family until the day of the child’s first laugh. That day marks the birth of the child as a social being, and a celebration is organized by the person who witnessed the laugh. This strikes me as beautiful, meaningful, and if the child happens to be a male, way more fun than circumcision.

There is an indigenous creation myth — I forget which culture — where the Great Spirit actually farts the world into existence. (One is tempted to think of this particular God as a male. Possibly that’s a sexist remark, but most of my ex-girlfriends would agree.) Either way, a creation story like that pretty well answers the question of why God allows suffering.

I don’t know for sure how the bride and groom feel, but I have no doubt that all who were present have this wedding preserved in vivid holographic sound and color in their memory banks. I would have treasured it regardless, because of my love for the people involved, the beautiful day, and the connection with Rumi. Thanks to Patch, however, it will always have a special flavor.

But I’m not sure I’ll invite him to my wedding.

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn, your friendly neighborhood Motivational Humorist.

1 Comment

A new crop circle appeared overnight in Wiltshire England. This one has concentric shapes that represent the famous equation of pi. For those who don’t remember your math, pi is the precise ratio of the lemon filling to the meringue.

Many people attribute crop circles, variously, to extra-terrestrials, beings from other dimensions, mother earth, and other entities trying to send us messages of some urgency. These messages could be about the survival of mankind, or changes in planetary consciousness, or the Quidditch scores at Hogwarts.

I never gave a thought to crop circles before I caught a lecture by an “expert.” Admittedly, it was fascinating, and to his credit, the expert didn’t offer any definitive explanations, preferring to leave that to M. Night Shyamalan.

But now, thanks to an expensive college education and Occams Razor (the principle that all things being equal, the simplest explanation is always the dog ate my homework), I have deduced the explanation: Crop Circles are Earth Burps. Or, if you live in Philadelphia: Earth Farts.

Seriously! Read on..

For the uninitiated (like myself), crop circles appear quite suddenly in amazing geometric patterns. Sort of like marching bands at halftime. They have measurable magnetic energy changes in their immediate areas. (If they were in Iraq, this would be indisputable evidence of WMDs.) They leave traces of intense heat that bends the crops in a certain bizarre way but does not destroy them. Exactly like when I try to microwave a Stouffer’s spinach souffle.

They also tend to appear in the same general locations over time. Often these become “sacred sites” where people throughout history have built stone circles, cathedrals, and later, shopping malls. These sites, our expert mentioned, happen to be places in the British Isles and the Canadian plains where the bedrock is usually softer limestone. Also where the natives drink a lot of beer.

Having majored in geology (I was confused, I wanted to be a rock star), this made my ears prick up. Especially because at the same conference we had just seen demonstrations of how sound waves leave distinctive geometric patterns in sand. Which explains why after a Metallica concert your brain makes the world looks like a Picasso painting for three days.

So here’s my brilliant reasoning. We know very little about the inner earth, but we do know that it has a solid inner core of metal, surrounded by a molten outer core, covered by a crusty mantle. Not unlike Dick Cheney. And this stuff is very hot. (If you don’t believe me, stick your finger in a volcano.) We know that liquid in motion produces waves. We know that waves have specific geometric signatures. So this hot, molten outer core is constantly producing intense, heated, vibrational outbursts with unpredictable results. Not unlike Dick Cheney.

What I figure is that every once in awhile when the conditions are right, one of these intensely hot wave vibrations makes it all the way to the surface through some of the softer rock, and erupts through Wallace and Gromit’s plowed field, leaving behind a puzzling, often indecipherable geometric pattern. Like tattoos on an NBA player.

Thus, crop circles are Earth Burps! Or if you live in Kansas City and eat a lot of barbeque, Earth Acid Reflux.

Either that, or the ETs have been watching too many Marx Brothers movies.

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn

10 Comments

2 Comments

I’m just back from Nashville and a few days writing songs, which as I’m sure you know is great fun and hard work. (What? You’re not falling for the hard work part? I think it was Oscar Wilde who said there are times when art almost approaches the dignity of manual labor.) Anyway, that’s why I haven’t posted in a week. All my creative juices were getting sucked into songwriting. Which is fine by me.

My friend Richard Helm and I were inspired to write a song about living in the “Now.” What got us going were some funny comments from my out-on-the-fringe doctor pal, Bowen White. So here’s what we’ve come up with, although we’re still tweaking. (Psst….no stealing! Teams of angry lawyers will camp on your lawn and paint “Thief” signs on your car….)

MORE NOW LATER

In the past I used to wish I could live in the Now
I knew if I knew then what I’d know later, I’d stop fretting my future
I was looking forward to the Now that hadn’t happened yet
There was plenty of Now back then too, but I used to forget

I’m in the Now a lot more now
And here’s what’s even greater
Spontaneously somehow
There’s always more Now later

I’m in the Now a lot more now
Living happy ever after
You never ever can run out
There’s always more Now later

A wise man had words of wisdom for the lifestyle that I’ve got
He said less is more, so I don’t do a lot
But I’ve transcended that, I’m the master, don’t you doubt it
I’m so good at doing nothing, no one (even) knows about it.

I’m in the Now a lot more now
I’m no procrastinator
I never hurry, I never worry
There’s always more Now later

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn, Richard Helm, Bowen White

(If you’re new to this blog and don’t know about my songs, click here.)

1 Comment

Yesterday I met a guy who’s hoarding gasoline because it’s doing better than the stock market. Except for the potential explosion in his basement, why not? You know the dollar’s in trouble when people from Europe are flying to New York to shop for bargains.

These are the times that try men’s souls. (Who said that? Dickens? Churchill? Paine?) Five dollar lattes are getting harder and harder to justify. Those $100 Springsteen tickets don’t seem as enticing as before. Maybe a new laptop won’t really make you $2,000 happier. That 25 million yacht seems less attractive than, say, the one for 20 million. It’s a problem.

I have the solution. Take a nap.

Get some rest and start fresh. My new wellness program can be summed up in one word: Siesta. As JoJo Jensen (Dirt Farmer Wisdom) said, “Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.”

Or as someone else put it, “There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock.”

Just because you’re not asleep doesn’t mean you’re awake. This becomes freakingly obvious when operating heavy machinery. If you’ve ever nodded off at the wheel and woken up still alive but in the lane of oncoming traffic, you know what being truly awake feels like.

Well, sort of. That hyper-adrenaline state (like from caffeine or the new version of Grand Theft Auto) is not really nirvana. It just seems like it, until the old adrenals stage a rebellion and refuse to play anymore. “Hey! There’s no saber-toothed tiger chasing you! We’re not falling for this crap again.”

So take the cure! First, invest all of your money in sleep stocks: mattress companies, linen makers, goose farmers, sleeping pill manufacturers, apnea surgi-centers, meditation music labels, sleep disorder clinics, Victoria’s Secret and Fredericks of Hollywood (sex helps sleep, especially for men). Then, once fully invested, do a Rip Van Winkle.

When you wake up, fully rested for the first time in God knows how long, your body has changed, and your state of mind has come along for the ride. You realize there are two kinds of things you shouldn’t worry about: things you can do something about, and things you can’t do anything about.

The pleasures of being horizontal now absurdify your previous frenetic activities, like going to the mall and buying stuff. For awhile, consciousness becomes that time between naps. It’s interesting how easily you get along without a lot of the stuff you thought you needed. Like reality shows and cable news.

The economy is what it is: a cycle. Like life. Like the seasons. Your sleep stocks have made you wealthy, and maybe you’ll buy something extravagant. Except you keep forgetting to. You’re too busy napping.

“Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep.”
~Fran Lebowitz

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn, your friendly neighborhood Motivational Humorist

No Comments

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.”
– Albert Einstein

Maybe you’ve read about the new supercollider in Switzerland. Scientists want to smash protons together to simulate the beginning of the universe and see what happens. Admirable, certainly, and a bargain at only 8 billion dollars.

Except there’s a teensy problem. It seems there’s a very small chance this experiment could result in the formation of one or more tiny black holes that could swallow the earth. Or it could result in the creation of spooky particles called “strangelets” (great name for a rock band!) that could leave the earth a dead lump of clay.

“Hey Ernst, we did it! It’s just like the early universe! Wait…what’s happening? Ernst, why are you getting longer and thinner? Whooooaaaaa!”

Pffft, we’re all gone.

Think of the irony. Here we are, worried about nuclear attacks, climate change, and rogue comet collisions. Meanwhile we smash some protons together, make a black hole, and the earth disappears.

The Darwin Awards suddenly come to mind. For the uninformed, these are given out every year to commemorate people who have removed themselves from the gene pool by accidentally killing themselves in the most creatively moronic ways. I’m certain that somewhere there’s a Greater Galactic Darwin Award, and soon all the extraterrestrials will be emailing each other.

“Did you hear about those crazy humans? They not only created nuclear weapons and trashed their environment, they wanted to understand the origin of the universe by smashing two protons together! What idiots! Everybody knows that’s how you make a black hole! Well, that sure solved all their problems. Man, I’m glad they’re not in our local cluster.”

I wasn’t too worried about this until a Cambridge physicist calculated the odds of it happening. Turns out it’s about the same as winning the lottery. The thing is, people do occasionally win the lottery. Not exactly comforting, is it? So what are we mere mortals to do?

The answer, of course, is to find a way to put George W. Bush in charge of it. Then it will go the way of stem-cell research and climate treaties. Failing that, we can engage in sane, rational dialogue with scientists until we get a better idea of the risks.

Also, I see no reason to cut back on chocolate and margaritas in the near future.

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn

2 Comments

What would you say if I told you there was a tree with seeds that purify water, green leaves more nutritious than spinach, tasty (also nutritious) edible pods, several other parts that work as medicines, and it thrives in some brutal climates.

I know what you’d say. “Cool! Just don’t make me eat the leaves.”

No, what you’d probably say is, “Wow — I want one!” At least that’s what I said, along with, “If this is real, why haven’t I heard about it before?”

Well, it’s real all right, and it’s called The Drumstick Tree. In fact there are millions of ‘em, probably just not in your yard. It also works as insecticide, fungicide and can be used to make lubricant and biofuel. It has innumerable other uses, and in ancient medicine was believed to prevent over 300 diseases. (The leaves alone have 7 times the vitamin C of Oranges, 4 times the vitamin A of carrots, 4 times the calcium of milk, 3 times the potassium of bananas, and twice the protein of yogurt.)

“Okay,” you’re saying, “so if all this is true, it’s occurring to me that maybe this would be a good thing for, like, really poor people.”

Ah, grasshopper, I see awareness dawning. Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a man from India named Balbir. Balbir had a mind for business and a gift with people. He had a natural magnetism and an enthusiasm that people loved. As a young man he came to America with a dream of making his fortune. Balbir attracted helpful friends and advisers, and soon he was doing very well for himself.

One day, on a flight back to India, he was looking out the airplane window at the vast continent below him. Suddenly he started thinking of all the poverty and the people who had so little. He was thinking of the millions of excruciatingly poor villagers down there who had to struggle just to eat. He thought about how they had to work so hard to survive. Luxuries like education were a hopeless dream. He wondered if there was any way he could ever make some kind of difference in their lives.

Not long after that, Balbir found out about the drumstick tree. He had, you might say, a wake up call.

Balbir realized he could use these trees to help the poorest of the poor. He would teach them how to plant, grow, and harvest these trees so they could become self-sufficient. He would use these trees to enable them to build schools and gain knowledge. They could come to feel a sense of empowerment in their lives. By giving them the dignity to help themselves, he would give them hope.

So Balbir came back to America, as they say, a changed man. He discussed all this with his beautiful wife, Treva, and their friends. They decided to dedicate their lives to fulfilling Balbir’s vision. They resolved to live on a humble income and devote all of their resources to making this happen.

And Trees For Life was born.

All this was 25 years ago. Since then, Balbir, Treva, and their small staff of dedicated volunteers have enabled millions of Drumstick trees to be planted in poor communities all around the world.

But that’s only the beginning. They developed ways to distribute fuel efficient cookstoves that save old trees from burning and human lives from smoke pollution. They help villagers plant native fruit trees that not only feed them, but provide shade and prevent soil erosion. They created educational models where children living in poverty receive a quality, modern education comparable to that offered at the best schools. Their newest program, Books For Life, finds creative ways to get native-language storybooks and textbooks into the hands of children who have never seen a book!*

When Trees for life shows people they have unlimited potential, they believe it. They see that when a few people lock their minds as one, something extraordinary takes place.

There’s much more, but it all started with one amazing tree. The scientific name for the drumstick tree is Moringa. Those tasty edible pods I mentioned before, they look like drumsticks. (Don’t think “chickens,” think “percussion intrument.”) You’ll be fascinated by it’s uses and potential at the Trees For Life website. I suggest starting with the 4 minute video, then check out the Moringa pdf.

Oh, and one more thing. Trees For Life is based, of all places, in Kansas.

*(Did you know that when school textbooks are a couple of years old they frequently get shipped off to the mill to become paper towels? Is there a school or district you could contact about donating these books to Books For Life instead? They would be shipped to poor villages in English-speaking countries like India, and a LOT of little lives could be changed with your simple phone call.)

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn

4 Comments

While singing for 3,600 people in Singapore, my comedy bit about the Top 10 Whiny Victim Love Songs went over like, well, day-old oatmeal. A smattering of laughs, but nothing like the response I get here in the Land of Dr. Phil and Oprah.

I was puzzled. Don’t they have love songs in Singapore? Did I sing too fast? Maybe they found out I smuggled chewing gum into the country. (You can’t even buy gum in Singapore. It’s a fanatically clean place. I’m not sure what the penalty is for chewing in public, but I hear some people are never seen again…)

As I was contemplating this, wisdom appeared in the form of an expat yankee who lives in Taiwan and is married to a local woman. He revealed the secret of enlightenment, at least in his opinion.

The Chinese and some other nearby Asians, he explained, don’t think about romance the same way westerners do. They take destiny very seriously. So if they feel “I had to give up a great love for my career” or “I gave up the love of my life for my family duty,” they consider themselves a victim of fate. They believe they’re entitled to wallow in whiny victim love songs. To them, that’s reality.

I flashed back to our first group trip to China. Our guide was a well educated, highly intelligent Beijing native who had traveled much of the world. We all liked him and he was a great guide. One day he told me with utmost sincerity that your fate is written in your palm and you can’t change it. I playfully argued about this with him for some time (partly because I thought he was kidding), but he wouldn’t budge.

Then it occurred to me that if you’re the product of a 6,000 year old culture which has always been under the thumb of some warlord, emperor, or dictator, you well might feel that landing on “Lose your Turn” in the cosmic “Wheel of Fortune” is a real possibility. On the other hand, if you come from a young country founded on the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of material goods, you’re more likely to believe you can go for the gusto, find your soulmate, and live happily ever after. (Or if you’re really shrewd, start an internet dating service.)

But with love, it’s never quite so simple. Even in the US, when it comes to romance, there’s an underlying belief in fate. I talk to people all the time who feel like they just stumbled into love when they weren’t looking for it. Love just landed on them like bird poop on the tomato patch. It was destiny.

I also talk to people who believe they can manifest a great relationship by focusing on attracting it, but a few years later I see them again and it still hasn’t happened. Some of them are starting to waver. “Maybe it’s not my karma,” they concede. (Full disclosure: I’ve thought this myself.)

What’s the answer? I’m not smart enough to know, but I know that the yearning for love is a driving force more powerful than even the desire for espresso and ice cream. This is why whiny victim love songs get written in the first place.*

*These are not necessarily sad songs, per se. They are songs that literally ASK for pain in exchange for love. They come from an island of longing and despair that no one should inhabit. Except maybe Phil Spector. Songs like “I’m So Miserable Without You, It’s Like You Were Here.” Or “If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?” Or “He Hit Me, And It Felt Like A Kiss.” Or “I Still Hold Her Body, But I Think I’ve Lost Her Mind.”

(You can download the The New Top 10 Whiny Victim Love Songs for free at the bottom of this page.)

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn

2 Comments

These days we hear a lot about becoming good citizens of the world. In that spirit, I’m proclaiming my solidarity by celebrating all the national holidays of every country. This means from now on I’ll only be working two days a year. I hope you’ll join me in this respectful recognition of our planetary unity.

A few of my favorites:

Japan: Hadaka Matsuri, The Naked Festival, January 14. Large groups of men (groups of large men?) strip down to sumo-type loincloths and run around town for a few hours. At midnight they head for the local Shinto temple where if they catch a piece of wood dropped from the ceiling by a priest they’ll have good luck for a year. (One word of explanation for this: sake.)

Mongolia: Naadam Festival, July 11-13. Three day holiday for “the manly games of horse racing, archery, and Mongolian wrestling.” (Women compete too, except in the manly wrestling.)

Belarus: Ivana Kupala Day, July 7. Celebrates ancient beliefs about fertility and autopurification. Young women and men don wreaths, sing, dance, jump through fire, and swim naked. (Not sure in which order this happens.)

Liberia: Matilda Newport Day, December 1. Parties and feasts to honor a widowed pioneer who lit a cannon with her pipe in 1822 and saved her country from a siege by tribespeople. (The descendants of the tribespeople don’t like this one.)

Russia: Conception Day, Sept. 12. To counteract the declining population, everybody gets a day off to stay home, have sex, and create babies. Couples who successfully produce a baby 9 months later win an SUV, a refrigerator or a television. (Lingerie stores reportedly do a ton of business.)

India: Holi Festival of Colors, 2 days in late February or early March. Partly celebrates young Krishna who had an eye for the babes and was quite a prankster. Men and women run around spraying each other with colored powders, frequently drenched by water dumped on them from various balconies. Drumming and dancing, wild and rowdy, being one of the few times when the sexes and castes are allowed to mix freely. (If you don’t cover yourself with oil first, you may be wearing the powder for weeks.)

Japan: Coming of Age Day, 2nd Monday in January. “All people who turned 20 during the last year are congratulated. Cities and towns hold ceremonies with alcoholic beverages, which are the privilege of adults.” (We’re back to sake.)

Spain (Bunyol): La Tomatina. Aug. 27. World’s largest tomato fight. 30 thousand people pelt each other for two hours until 125,000 tomatoes are exploded. Celebrates a spontaneous food fight during a 1945 parade. (Might want to bring a change of clothes.)

United States: Halloween, October 31. Groups of scary costumed children extort enormous quantities of ADD-inducing substances (known as “candy”) from terrorized neighbors. Reportedly this custom is spreading to other countries. The following day is a state holiday in Louisiana, probably to peel the kids off the ceiling.

Citizens of the world, it’s going to be a busy year. Better get in shape!

(You can find videos of some of these festivals if you search YouTube. For Group Travel opportunities with Greg, click here.)

© 2008 Greg Tamblyn

No Comments