If you’ve been drawn into Google Plus, Google’s latest way to disperse your life, by now you may be wondering what all the excitement is about.  I think I’m missing the point of Google Plus or it may mean that I need find a more constructive addiction that dragging and dropping people’s icons into circles. 

Clearly I have no issue with circles.  Vis les enso.  But it would seem I have issues with what it means to be in a circle.  For those not trapped in G+, circles are Google Plus’ way of “helping” us organize the people with whom we associate.  You drag and drop your companions, friends and family into circles labelled “Companions,” “Friends, “and “Family… or whatever you wish to label them because no one sees the labels.  The advantage is in targeting your messages to specific audiences.  So, your Great-Aunt Mathilda who may be in your G+ circle of octogenarians doesn’t have to read about your latest YouTube find of dancing naked penguins.

It has promise.  It also has a way of uncovering how wide-ranging your interests and fellowships are.  Mine, for example, seem to be myopically focused on Buddhists, Buddhist Bloggers, Bloggers, and People Who Bug Me But Might Occasionally Have Something Useful To Say.  Yes, that latter group was an interesting test of equanimity.   It comprises of folks who add me to their circles but with whom I share little more than an account on G+ and a surface commonality in Buddhism and/or Psychology.  Adding them mindlessly to my circles only exposed me to wild ranting about US politics, techie stuff that verged on techeroticism (that’s an unhealthy attachment to all things new that the Internet puts out), and other “stuff.” I think some people simply added me to increase their body count: Igor has 371 people in his circle – you have 45!

So, being a great fan of the Abdhidhamma, I created another category, a non-circle: “You are not in any of my circles.” 

That concept is also the gross pain in the behind that is G+.  Once someone adds you to their circle, you can’t get rid of them short of blocking them.  Even if you don’t add them to your circles, they continue to appear in your proximal view called “Incoming.”  How apt a name that conjures up visions of being tracked and struck by drones!  But at least, by holding them in the tank, I can observe their posts (and frequency!) before deciding on whether to include them in a circle. 

I’m not sure about all this.  The shrink in me says this style of adding people without their permission for admission is a safe way of not risking rejection.  And personally, there’s a discomfort in making judgments about people and consigning them to waste bins or in-groups.  Or maybe I’m just making too much of this.  G+ has some great features in terms of having more relevant conversations with like-minded people and private exchanges with individuals.  Time will tell.  The proof of this pudding will be in the eating.  And all those clichés that go around and come around.

In the meantime, it’s a good practice of discernment.

Thank you for the sweet support after yesterday’s post!  I’ve been reading various posts around the internet and it may be that we, as a community, are falling into a low biorhythm.  One or two other bloggers are stepping back and taking that in-breath.  Who’s to know how many have just silently folded their tents and walked into the night for a while. 

I think we forget what it means to try and be the barrier between good and evil.  That may not be the exaggeration it appears at first read.  Form and emptiness aside, we do conceptualize the world as good and the impingement of unskillfulness on it as evil.  Maybe in our strong moments we can see that it is a flow of intentions and actions.  But mostly, I think we are always defending against the potential of “what-might-happen-if” intention and attention waver at a here-to-fore-unknowable critical moment.

And that’s the weight, isn’t it?  We can’t ever know what will happen – regardless of our intentions.

I’m struggling at the moment with a case of the “Lucy’s.”  You know the Peanuts cartoon riff where Lucy holds out the football and Charlie Brown debates about her intentions.  It’s such a model of testing our faith in Ultimate Goodness in the Other.  Inevitably, Chuck opts for embodying that faith in Lucy.  Inevitably, Chuck also gets to embody the sensations of being supported by the solidity of the earth beneath him as he lies prone on his back when she pulls the football away at the last moment.

Ironically, despite Chuck’s unending pessimism, he’s the eternal optimist when it comes to his fellow humans.  What he isn’t doing (or modelling for us so we will) is trusting the Eternal Goodness in himself that is alerting him to his investment in an outcome.  He truly believes that his relentless engagement in Lucy’s game will manifest Ultimate Goodness in her. 

We can always talk ourselves into trusting that there is Ultimate Goodness in the Other.  At least, I can… and do.  I don’t believe there is anything wrong with that.  I really don’t even need to talk myself into it.  The problem is – and this is the sticky part of my practice – I assume behaviour will manifest that is congruent with that Ultimate Goodness.  The reality?  Behaviour often takes many light years to arrive after the initial burst of pure light.  Worse, I sometimes believe that my engagement in the process will bring about Ultimate Change in the Other.  And there’s the “not-knowing” bit.  It may or may not be up to me to be the last step leading to change.

So, as I lie here on my back, having had that ego-football yanked out from my enthusiastic rush at it, please remember to remind me of this insight … again and again.