Excerpt from Bad Karma

For this installment of my blog, I'd like to continue the "thinking" theme and share an excerpt from Joe Frank's radio program titled "Bad Karma" which is part of his "The Other Side" series.  I would highly recommend patronizing Joe Frank's website and purchasing his material there.  I can recommend other programs of his that I particularly like.  If anyone is interested, feel free to contact me.

"Bad Karma" was one of the first, full Joe Frank programs that I listened to.  The whole show had a big effect on me and the way I think about things like spirituality, religion, life, etc.  The part I am going to share, in particular, really resonated with me.  It got me really thinking about a lot of the things I was taught in school and R.C. church.  It describes a dream that Joe had where he is going to find God and ask him some questions.  The following is my transcription of "Bad Karma" from 39:00 until 47:00:


I was walking down a country road somewhere in Tunisia or possibly Morocco. I’m not really sure. There was a mountainous region to the left that suggested the Cordillera that runs down the spine of South America through Equador and Peru. It doesn’t really matter where it was.  I was there.  It was a dream.  And, as I walked along, I approached a large, mud brick structure, perhaps three, four stories tall. The walls themselves of adobe brick were weathered by age.

So, the gate opened slowly with a great clanking of chains and a grinding and protesting of wooden and iron clad gears. And, as soon as I entered, the ambience changed dramatically. For what was within the walls was a great, vast, treeless desert stretching beyond the horizon to the distant point in which the sky melted evenly with the sands. And there, inside, I found myself in a garden setting where birds were singing, and perfumed fountains flowed, and beautiful maidens offered trays of sweet meats and fruits.

I was in an oasis in the desert. And, I had come there in order to speak with God. I wanted to ask him the questions that many of us ponder.

I needed to know where we go when we close our eyes. And, who’s idea was it for the word ‘lisp’ to have an ‘s’ in it? And, if one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest drown too? And, is there another word for synonym? And, if the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent?

Actually, what had brought me this great distance to meet God was my obsession with watching National Geographic Wild Kingdom specials on television, in which we see the hierarchy of predators: lions stalking their prey, moving silently through the tall grass and then chasing and bringing down a gazelle. One lion holding in its jaws the dying animal by the throat while another is disemboweling it. And, you see the wild, desperate look on the face of the gazelle suffocating, being devoured.

Or a zebra crossing a river and a crocodile launching itself out of the water and clamping the hapless zebra in its huge jaws. The zebra dragged into the water, screaming, and then drowned and eaten by the crocodile. And then, there’s the python, falling from the tree, quickly wrapping itself around the wild boar in the embrace of death. Every time the boar breathes out, the snake contracts, squeezing it until the boar can no longer breathe in—asphyxiating.

I watch television, read books, listen to classical music, entertain guests, hang pictures on the wall, put expensive Persian rugs on the floor. I bathe, cook, make love to my girlfriend, while at the very same time, underneath the very house I live in, there is a dark sunless world of insects and microbial life hunting and eating each other. The living beings in the soil beneath my house are disemboweling even smaller creatures who seek even smaller prey with voracious abandon.

And, when I replace a light bulb in my garden, I go outside and I reach up to unscrew the dead bulb and my hand passes through a spider web. And, there are maybe twenty, different, little flies and moths that have been trapped and killed and sucked dry by the spider.

And, I want to talk to God about this. I want to say to God: “You created the universe. You created this whole system of survival of the fittest—this hierarchy of murder. And, how am I supposed to go to church or to synagogue and worship and pray to you and talk about the perfection of your creation and the beauty of all your works? And, yet here I see them as a vast and hopeless display of violence and death from which there is, for the creatures involved, no escape.

I want to love you—to give myself over to you—to find solace in you—and comfort in you. But I keep turning on the National Geographic specials on the Discovery Channel and, frankly, it’s very disturbing.

So, in my dream, God is sitting there in a canvas director’s chair by the water. He’s got a single diamond stud in his left earlobe. And, he’s wearing a pair of drawn-at-the-waist-with-a-rope-sash linen pants by Hermes—his feet in a pair of gorgeous Italian sandals. His eyes hidden behind a very expensive pair of Oakley sunglasses made of titanium. And he’s sipping from a cool glass of Perrier Jouet. But before I can speak, he reaches forward and draws a pack of cards from behind my ear, along with a gold coin, and a ping-pong paddle. And I realize, I don’t like this dream anymore.

Thinking: My Dirty Little Habit

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone - "to relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. I began to think at the office. I knew that thinking and chiropractic don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"

Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's. I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day a good friend called me aside. He said, "Greg, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking about what you do and just do it your practice will go down the tube."

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after that conversation. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..." "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!" "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough.

"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with a PBS station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors...they didn't open. The library was closed! To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.

I never miss a TA meeting.  At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Dumb and Dumber." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.  And we're encouraged to subscribe to online forums and immerse our minds in "fluff".


I still have my practice, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.


--this was actually written by a good friend, Dr. David Williamson, may he rest in peace.  He was an excellent chiropractor in Durham, N.C.