#365Gratitude Day 259: Alan Watts & The Gift of Eternity

Last Christmas my wife Missy got me an amazing gift.  She bought me the entire audio catalog of the lectures of the philosopher Alan Watts.

I've been slowly digesting it for the better part of a year now.   It's immense, over 4 GB of data.  It's literally seven entire 24 hour days or so of audio.

It's a profound gift.

As I was driving to work today, I was listening to some of it. In this particular lecture that you see playing on my phone above, Watts was discussing the Buddhist view of reincarnation and the universe.

It's brilliant stuff. He was saying how reincarnation is not some spooky magical thing.   

It's not that there's some weird ephemeral soul which leaves your body and then is milled by the universe, processed, and poured into some other living thing.

It's actually much simpler than that.  You are the universe. As am I.  

Anywhere, and everywhere, that life is aware of itself, it's the universe.  Just the same way as the molecules in your hand are connected to be a hand,  yet are also separate molecules, is the same way that we reincarnate. 

You are the entire universe, expressed in the place and time where it and we are you.

I am too. What else could I be? 

All we need to live forever is just to change the way we understand the living that we're doing right now.

I'm profoundly grateful to my wife for giving me this gift.

#365Gratitude Day 258: A new podcast hat for our new season

A few days ago, I announced our latest recording of the Big Little Podcast.  We had a little schedule hiccup, resulting in our rescheduling the show to tonight, in about an hour.

To celebrate, I'm wearing my newest podcasting hat for tonight's show.  Time to get this circus going again.

#365Gratitude Day 257: I'm alright in his book

My friend Moliére came down to visit me this weekend.  He's created this awesome hardcover book, all about his travels around the country with his adorable stuffed dog Padmé.

Their last visit to see me is one of the chapters!

Go on, say it with me, "Awwww!"

I'm grateful to be honored so.

#365Gratitude Day 256: Friendship really IS magic

My friend Ashley sent me this today:

Aside from the fact that it's utterly, amazing, it speaks volumes for my friends.  I love that friends of mine groove on my shark thing, play into it, support it, and send me stuff.  It's like a telepathic hug-at-a-distance when someone sends me some shark themed thing they found, that they know I would like.  I love being thought of.  It makes me feel loved.

I'm grateful I have such magical friends.

#365Gratitude Day 254: The Big Little Podcast's Return

The Big Little Podcast returns tonight, and I'm thrilled about it.  Spacey and I started the podcast over three years ago, almost on a whim.  We live several hundred miles apart, and miss each other all the time, and were looking for a way to spend more time together doing something meaningful.

He and I (and our polyamorous sister, Pene, collectively known as The Ghidrah) have taught classes together for years.  We thought, "Wouldn't it be cool, fun, neat, and maybe really effective if we put those chops into making a podcast?"

We had no idea how well it would turn out, and what a big deal it would turn out to be.

When it first got going, we were obsessed with our "numbers", the amount of downloads we were getting per episode.  That kept being a thing for me personally, until we took our first hiatus at the end of our first "season", and we tallied up the numbers for the season.  The 52 episodes comprising season 1 had been downloaded over 875,000 times.

That blew us away.  I won't say we NEVER look anymore, but at a certain point, we stopped worrying about being validated.  Which is ironic, because not requiring validation is a major theme of the show.  

The numbers really don't matter at all, anyhow.  On a fairly regular basis, we hear from folks all over the world about how the show has helped them to love themselves, and grow.  It boggles my mind that as far away as South Africa, or Australia, this thing we're doing is helping people.  Honestly, I feel the podcast is among the most important things I have ever done in and with my life.

The show went on hiatus at the beginning of the summer, as brother and I needed time for some significant life stuff we each had going on.  

The show returns tonight and I'm ever so grateful for that.  It's time to get to work.