What Matters Most?

There's no denying the severe difference between lip service & real embodiment in human relations.  But I'm going to step sidewise to massage your remark a little.

You may have noticed that I use the email address "pretendtomeditate@gmail.com"?  

The reason is that pretending to meditate cuts through ordinary mental divisions associated with goal-orientation and reactive distinctions between Genuine and Hypocritical.  Pretending has real efficacy.  In this particular case, the developmental impact on the neuro-psychology of individuals involved in all sorts of meditation regimes indicates a potency that eludes the authentic depths of any particular technique.  Our inherent "meditation program" starts to activate when we merely adopt the pose, when we even deceptively invoke a context of meditative intention, when we look inward even as a joke or a means of vainly fooling others.

Wantonly deceptive and shoddy simulation of meditation is very often enough to start activating those built-in self-refinement programs which deepen, harmonize and enhance our feeling-consciousness.  

On the other hand -- living in a town struck with a mania for marathons -- I can attest to the fact that many, many bodies are holding back & thwarting their own physical exercise.  

Dennis Leary has a famous old routine about joggers dying of heart attacks while jogging.  In fact we can do physical exercise "really" or "falsely" -- in the sense that going through objective motions often allows us to be quite ineffective, inept, even counter-productive when it comes to our authentic health.  

In conclusion, Dan Millman can bite me!

Well, that might be a bit extreme (might!) but you get the idea -- real/fake is both as obvious as we think and much more slippery than we think.

Thanks, I've been...

Layman Pascal

Yes.

What about it do you like?