Paraprosdokian Sentences 2

Paraprosdokian Sentences (what ever the hell that is? Well I'll tell ya)
A paraprosdokian (from Greek, meaning "beyond" and
"expectation") is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is
surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis.


Ø Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of every
successful man is usually another woman.

Ø A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

Ø You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a
parachute to skydive more than once.

Ø The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good
ideas!

Ø Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.

Ø A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way
that you will look forward to the trip.

Ø Hospitality: making your guests feel like they're at home, even if
you wish they were.

Ø Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live
with.

Ø I discovered I scream the same way whether I'm about to be
devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my
foot.

Ø Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they
go.

Ø I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.

Ø I always take life with a grain of salt, plus a slice of lemon, and a
shot of tequila.

Ø When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire
Department usually uses water.

Ø You're never too old to learn something stupid.

Ø To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit
the target.

Ø Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Ø Some people hear voices. Some see invisible people. Others have
no imagination whatsoever.

Ø A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as
when you are in it.

Paraprosdokian Sentences 1

Paraprosdokian Sentences (what ever the hell that is? Well I'll tell ya)
A paraprosdokian (from Greek, meaning "beyond" and
"expectation") is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is
surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis.


Ø Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and
beat you with experience.

Ø Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than
standing in a garage makes you a car.

Ø The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.

Ø Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear
bright until you hear them speak.

Ø If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.

Ø We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

Ø War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Ø Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in
a fruit salad.

Ø The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the
cheese.

Ø Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then
proceed to tell you why it isn't.

Ø To steal words from one person is plagiarism. To steal ideas from
many is research.

Ø A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train
stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

Ø How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a
whole box to start a campfire?

Ø Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good for anything, but
you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Ø Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can
train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

Ø I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

Ø A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that
you don't need it.

Ø Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "If an
emergency, notify:" I put "DOCTOR".

Ø I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Ø I saw a woman wearing a sweat shirt with "Guess" on it...so I said
"Implants?"

Ø Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion
stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

Ø Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the
street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

Ø Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president
and 50 for Miss America ?

Just Stop

Remember that old joke: guy goes to the doctor, says, “It hurts when I do this,” and the doctor says, “Don’t do that”? The spiritual truth is, it is that easy, if we did what the doctor advised, the pain would go away. But we don’t. I’m all the time doing things that don’t work for me and actually hurt me, like eating potato chips, visiting porn sites, and mousing even after I feel pain in my hands. Do you do that, too, do things that don’t work for you and actually hurt you? I think we all do.

Why is an interesting question. If we could figure out why perhaps we wouldn’t do those things so often. Stopping seems almost out of the question tho, too much seeming pain not enough seeming gain to go for the cold turkey approach. But the fact is, we don’t have to know why in order to stop, we can just stop. Needing to know ‘why’ is a game the analytical left brained part of our ego minds play with us. We could just stop, feel better and let the improvement, the good, pain-free experience sustain us.

The Truth about us is, the Course says, as does SOM and indeed the deepest mystical traditions of all faiths, Gnostic Christianity, Sufi Islam, Zen Buddhism and Kabalistic Judaism, that we are perfect, healthy, pain free, spiritual beings right now, one with all that is, dreaming we are having an earthly experience. This truth can not be perceived, but only known, the Course says. That means we can not use everyday, ego consciousness to know who we are, we can only know who we are, actually experience it. The more I do this, know this, the more I know it and actually experience it. In other words, when I follow the doctor’s advice, and stop doing what hurts and instead open myself to the truth, the pain stops and my perfect, God-given reality emerges. The more I stop doing what hurts, the more blessed and pain free I am. Just stop. Each time the opportunity to do something hurtful to myself or another arises, I can know that right there, in that place, in that moment, I can shift from pain to bliss, just stop, and experience the truth about myself and the other.

This is not only true for me, but true for everyone that does it. There is a parallel process for us to follow: faith and practice. Know the Truth of your own and everyone’s reality as spirit; court the divine and practice eliminating anything unlike it in your consciousness. It’s difficult at first but gets easier the more you do it; or at least, that’s how it’s working for me. Knowing the Truth, courting spirit and eliminating the illusion of my little, pain-ridden, earth bound self, is even becoming almost as good as eating potato chips and visiting porn sites!

Witholding Forgiveness 2

Withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.

Sailing to the edge of the known world, past consensus reality to discover something greater that our selves, our little, fearful selves and contact our greater Self, the Self that is all of life: human, animal, vegetable and mineral, and then returning, bringing that ‘something’ with you to share with the rest of Life, is what Joseph Campbell called ‘the hero’s journey, and requires letting go, opening to something new, faith and trusting your own experience.

I found that I had to do all these things simultaneously. But, trusting your own experience is a good place to start. Trusting your own experience means, among other things, understanding and learning how your inner power works and using it to have a stronger more meaningful connection with that power Itself, within yourself and outside yourself, in others, and to manifest more of what your vision suggests and less of what diminishes it.

What supports Life is life. What supports Love is love. Means and ends must be congruent. It is a sad and horrible confusion of inner and outer, self and Self, reality and Reality, to think that Life is created through Death. That we have to burn people at the stake to save their souls. The truth seems to be: As above, so below; What goes around comes around. We can not use fear, horror and terror and not be fearful, horrible and terrible. We can not use shock and awe and not be shocking and awful. Life does not come from death but from Life. What goes around comes around.

Its horrible and terrible for me to contemplate this truth, much less believe it, because, as an American, I see that my nation does use shock and awe and then stupidly wonders why other nations find us shocking and awful. But I am also proud to be an American because we have our ideals, our Constitution. I want us, long for us, to be more about our ideals and less about our fears. We didn’t win the Cold War by being more Russian than the Russians, by using their intrusive, totalitarian regime, we won it by sticking to our ideals, by being Americans. So, let’s trust our own experience, let go of our fears and false beliefs and have faith that living up to our ideals will work.

We have to bet it all on black, so to speak; to resolve to renounce means not congruent with the ends we seek. If we are about Life, we resolve to use only Life affirming means. If we are about human rights and democracy, we resolve to renounce strategies, policies, and tactics that deny human rights and are undemocratic. This will not be easy, because it is inner work, about taking responsibility for our own and our communities’ thoughts and actions and for being in integrity and living up to our highest and best.

If we are Christians, we want to choose love and compassion – the heart of Jesus’ teaching, not only for other Christians but for all God’s creation, the entire earth – land, sea, animal, vegetable and mineral. But doing the inner work and following Jesus’ teaching is too demanding, too difficult and we have grown lazy and complacent, would rather blame others and look for ‘solutions’ outside of ourselves.

For me, I’m stuck at the point of thinking: ‘Bring the guilty bastards in so I can forgive them!’ As I rely on my small mind, my earthly ego mind, I think I know what needs to be done and become quite angry and upset when almost no one else sees it the way I do. I’m like, ‘lead, follow, or get out of the way!’

But that’s not working for me, never really worked for me, though I’m fairly ‘successful’ as the world defines success. But I know if anything is going to change for the better, I have to change, first. I have to trust that if I get my bloated nothingness out of the way, set an intention to realize my connection with all that is, then think, feel, live and act from that place of connection, I will know what to do; and what I do will not only be good for me, because if its only good for me, its not good enough, but for all of Life. It will build not only a world that works for everyone, but for every thing, as well.

Witholding Forgiveness

Withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die. Wow! How cool! How thought provoking and how so very true. I know it, I feel it, when I feel hurt, victimized, wounded to the depths of my soul, wronged, not understood or appreciated, that’s pain enough. But to compound it by seeking vengeance and punishment of the ‘evil’ doer and not letting go of my pain until such vengeance is exacted, is just as painful to me as the initial ‘wrong’, if not more so. That’s ‘eye for an eye’ thinking, primitive and something I pride myself on evolving past. It’s outside-in thinking, instead of inside-out. It makes me a powerless victim instead of a potent actor.

I ‘know,’ intellectually, that each time I feel victimized, wounded or offended, I am literally giving my inner power away to a seemingly real outside cause. It is, in fact, using that inner power to make that outside cause appear real. I know in my sane, calmer moments that whatever seems to be going on ‘out there’ is a pigment of my imagination. Oh, there may be something really, physically going on, but what does it mean? Who gives it meaning, me, Glenn Beck, the Miami Herald, my synagogue or church, my spouse, parents or family, History or Economics? Who makes it offensive and threatening to me? Who decides that that event victimizes me? Isn’t that my choice? It’s up to me to decide what something means. I can take all those sources into consideration, but bottom line, I perceive, I interpret, I assign meaning and live with the consequences.

So it’s all me, there’s no one to ‘blame’ but me. Yeah, but things are happening, people do do bad things, there are evil doers and there is an outer reality, a reality greater than me or my interpretation.

Up to a point, what’s ‘out there’ is consensus reality, a reality agreed upon by our culture, not ‘true’ reality. Remember when consensus reality held that the earth was flat and if you sail to far, you’ll fall off? For 3,000 years, that ‘reality’ kept people from sailing ‘too far’ whatever that was, out of sight of land, and discovering an even greater reality. What used to be evil, using telescopes, conducting autopsies, accepting strangers and people different from us, is, for most civilized people, no longer considered evil.

I said there’s no one to blame but me. Why ‘blame’ anybody? Doesn’t blaming suggest some fixed perspective, some absolute, unchanging perspective and understanding like the earth is flat? Of course there are things that we don’t want done like rape, murder, theft, but we don’t want them done, that’s the point.

The point is not to ‘blame,’ the point is to not have those things done. Is blaming and punishing the best way to do that? Do blaming and punishing restore the rape, murder or robbery victims? The trick is for you and I and our society to figure out how to get what we want and stop what we don’t want without misusing our inner power. We do so much blaming and punishing, feel like wounded victims so often, that if this way of being, of seeing the world and using our inner power worked wouldn’t we have a better society?

What if we, you and I, I, really took responsibility for myself, for my judgments, perceptions and interpretations, stopped feeling like a wounded victim needing to blame and punish and instead used my inner power, the same inner power you have and the so-called ‘evil doer’ has, to see things differently, to stop thinking the world is flat, and find some other way, a better way, a way of using our inner power responsibly to build a round world, more in line with our hopes and aspirations? What would happen then? Would we be sailing to far out, would we fall off? All the greatest guides we’ve ever had, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi and Martin Luther King say not. Their lives and writings say, sail on, take responsibility and have the courage to stop blaming, being victim and victimizer, and discover a new and better world.

Withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.

Voter Anger

We are not punished for our mistakes, but by them. We are not punished for our mistakes, but by them.

This is so true for me! I find I am angriest with others and more prone to blame and want to punish, when I’m angry or disappointed with myself. When I’ve fucked up and done something dumb and stupid, something I knew better than to do, something I should not have done, I look around for something or someone else to blame: it’s my boss’ fault; I’m too, busy, there’s not enough time; my spouse didn’t do what s/he was supposed to do. Anything but pause, reflect and take responsibility.

When I take responsibility, I take control, and with control I might see what I did as a mistake, not a sin, then do what’s necessary to avoid making that same mistake twice. But if I’m a victim of the situation or others, with no control, and what I did was a sin, not a mistake, and a sin must be punished, sometimes severely, then what went wrong and didn’t work, will happen again, and again, and again.

We are not punished for our mistakes, but by them. Means there’s no sin involved, but only a mistake; and that mistake can be seen as feedback, as neutral, non-judgmental information that I can use to correct the mistake. ‘Punishment’ is really not the best word, but it works to get attention. From the ego’s perspective it feels like punishment, not feedback. But if I can shift to spirit’s perspective, I can see it as a learning experience, an opportunity to learn to take responsibility and stop blaming.

Catching myself being angry with others and more prone to blame and want to punish, when I’m angry or disappointed with myself, is part of the learning. If I don’t become aware of what’s going on inside me and resolve to take responsibility for it and change it, my behavior becomes more and more irrational, harmful and destructive, until the mistake does become a sin, and I really screw up so badly that it’s clear there’s no one to blame but me.
I see this anger at self, blaming of others and failure to take responsibility spiraling into the irrational, harmful and destructive behavior now manifesting in the so-called ‘voter anger’ the media keep talking about. Which BTW is another of the so-call main stream media’s self fulfilling prophecies; the more they talk about it, the realer it gets.

Voters have to take responsibility for their choices. The choices were a mistake, but rather than reflect and take responsibility, they blame and attack. After eight grueling years of Republican excess and control of all three branches, voters realized their mistake and gave Democrats a chance. The Democrats have had less than two years to correct the mistakes of the previous eight, not an easy chore, especially when the Republicans have done pretty much nothing to help and lot’s to obstruct. Yet the voters are ‘angry’ with the ‘system’ and are irrationally thinking of again turning the Nation over to the very people and ideas that have brought us to the current state of affairs.

What might happen if the voters stopped being ‘angry,’ blaming and irrational, stopped thinking of themselves as victims of Washington – I mean it is Washington, after all, not Moscow, tho the way some people talk, you’d think it was Moscow - took responsibility for their earlier mistaken choices and thought carefully about what to do now? Would they give Obama and the Democrats a few more seconds to undo what Bush and the Republicans had eight years to do? Would they cease being manipulated by fear, loathing and hatred and shift to a place that values cooperation, compromise and the radical idea that whatever party one’s in, we’re all Americans? What would happen if we demanded more of our politicians and absolutely shunned those that pandered to our fear, loathing and hatred? Perhaps we’d be Americans [not, God forbid, French, as we are now] and our country would be the United States of America again.

Gratitude

I’ve been going through a rough patch physically, but have been OK emotionally. I’m grateful. In fact, looking from the place of not being dragged down by the ‘suffering’ or not suffering when my normal way of thinking about my situation would have required suffering, has been, is, an expansive experience. I see I’m not as small as I thought I was, or, I’m more than I thought I was, able to not be made a victim, able to see things differently, even to find some benefit in the difficulty, to make lemons into lemonade. So, I’m grateful for what I’m going through.
As Barbara Leger in today’s SOM says, “Gratitude can totally turn around moments of fear or distress by allowing us to shift attention from what isn’t working to what is. In every circumstance, there is something to be grateful for, and when we find it, our gazes shift and we are lifted up.
“Gratitude is the grease in tight spots, the hope in the darkness and the grace of Spirit guiding us to see more of the whole picture. Looking for the good allows us to see and appreciate the gifts tucked inside the challenge. Praising the good raises our energy to a higher, more positive vibration, which attracts more of the same. Like attracts like. Our bodies notice, our cells are happier, and we see the world through softer eyes, and amazingly, see more to appreciate.”
That’s been the case for me in my current situation. I didn’t create the situation to prove Barbara Leger right. [But perhaps, maybe I did.] Her reading this morning happened to be on gratitude and it helped me reflect on what’s been going on with me. Just a coincidence, one of those happy accidents, or was it?