Why Is God Laughing? A review

Today I'm celebrating the true beginning of spring break. I slept a full night for the first time in five days, got up and planted some garden, went to the art museum. And I don't have to teach during the break, which is nice. So my head feels like it's clearing out and things look a lot better today.
Time to get back to the purpose of becoming an optimist.

I'll be calling on an expert for advice in the art of optimism today. I have chosen to look at a book by Deepak Chopra called, Why Is God Laughing? (2008, Harmony Books).

This modest tome has been on my grandmothers end table--surely I won't have to sell that table on eBay--for about a week now, and every time I pass, it mocks me. Why is God Laughing?
Obvious answer: "Because He's an a@$%^&!" Because He's mean and enjoys our suffering. Or maybe the conservatives had it right all along. Maybe God is a conservative and is laughing at the idea of this family of liberals getting it's payback. I'm sure there are people out there who would go along with that.

Such was the thinking of the old me--the stressed out me getting along on 3-4 hours of sleep a night. But after a little of the downsizing dust had settled, I picked it up. Okay Deepak. I'll bite. Why is God laughing?

I'll get to that in a second. But first a Deepak Chopra disclaimer:

Chopra has written over 50 books on various spiritual and health topics (this book claims "more than 50" but it's from 2008. There may be well over 100 by now.) Until this week, I'd never read a single one of them. I don't, in general, trust someone who is that big of a publishing phenomenon. Especially not a self-help guru. Sounds too much like snake oil.

If you look under his entry in the Skeptic's Dictionary, you'll find some strange stuff. (Note, in particular, his recommendation for treating cataracts) And then, there was the hilarious bit where Conan O'Brien visited the Chopra Center a few months ago. (You can find it here, but be warned, you'll have to view a short commercial first.)

But I wanted to look at the optimism books to see if they would help me, and Deepak seemed like a good place to start. The book had the word "optimism" in the subtitle, it was about laughing (which is fun in yoga) and it has a forward by Mike Myers, a comedian I like. (It also had an ad for Myer's movie, "The Love Guru" on the last page, so I guess there was a little cross promotion going on.)

At first, I had to keep checking the spine of the book. Yes, there was a Dewey decimal number (200, for religion). But this is mostly a fictional story about a successful comedian (like Myers?) who's visited by the spirit of his recently-dead father. The comic then meets with a mysterious guide who gives him riddles and tests as part of the "process" of discovering his true soul.
The nonfiction section of the book is at the very end, where Chopra identifies 10 principals of spiritual optimism. And it's a good thing, too, because that part is a much duller read.

My philosophy on books is this: Even if it looks like a fair amount of BS, I'll keep on wading through because I've invested a lot of time and there's got to be something I can get out of it. In this case, there was a fair amount of confusing stuff. The comedian used jokes as a role to defend himself against pain, which sounded at first like it was wrong. But then later, Chopra said the soul was playing the role of a human, and realizing this is a key step.

Or something like that.

But there were also some good and helpful things that spoke to me. The first chapter, for example, was about fear. Most people in a dentist's waiting room imagine pain, but only a small percentage actually feel pain. Even so, the imaginary aspect of fear causes people to suffer disproportionately.
Yeah, I can see that. The picture of the girl curled up on the motel bed has been with me a lot this week. The idea of not being able to help your children when they are suffering is just...terrifying to me. But now that we know about the work cutback, this image doesn't scare me so much anymore. It could happen to us, yes. We don't have a lot of close relatives for a fallback. That part hasn't changed. But...I can't explain it. As a thing like that gets closer, you start thinking of solutions. It's not an abstraction. And it doesn't seem so scary.

Also, Chopra's first spiritual principal at the end of the book was, "The healthiest response to life is laughter." This, I have also found to be true. Although my laughter hasn't always been genuine (laughing yoga) or kind, it has always helped me in some way. So I plan to continue seeking out laughter and fun wherever possible.

Why is God laughing? According to Chopra, it's because the concept of human beings believing they are separate from him/her/it, is so artificial as to be comical. Which I admit, makes no sense to me. I'm willing, though, to try to stop being so afraid.

Ho Ho Here We Go (Again)

Last week was stressful. Unusually stressful. We dealt with rumors of more work cutbacks, a minor health problem, an unexpectedly high bill to repair the rototiller and of course, the continuing stock market saga. So as the week marched on, we had a decision to make:
Should we return to laughing yoga?
My husband and son had scheduling conflicts. My daughter, though, surprised me. She'd been assuming all along we would go again. And--little did I know--she'd been busy inviting friends.
Going to laughter yoga once out of curiosity is one thing (read account here). Going back is quite another. And going back in the company of two or more teenage girls...well, that puts it in a whole different dimension.
Irene, my daughter, is at the age when it becomes obvious that your parents need to be reined in. They should be told to keep their public actions more tepid, beige and uninteresting, lest they embarrass you.
To that end, we have a long list of things we've been asked not to do in public:
Sing
Whistle
Dance
Gesticulate excessively with the hands
Smile too much
Or generally do anything else deemed too goofy.
Now, I am to believe that I will be doing all those things and more, not only in public but in the company of her girlfriends. What's happening here? Am I being punked? Will I see a secretly-taped video of myself shooting "laughter arrows" later on Facebook?
Since I was a little leery about her motives, we had a talk before going. Just to make things clear. You can't isolate yourselves in your little group, I said. You can't talk to each other. You have to do everything the instructor says.
And I better not see you making fun of anyone else there, either.
But she seemed sincere and, just in case she was, I didn't want to be the harsh cop much more than that.
So off we went, with two of her friends.
The class was essentially the same, but with some changes in the exercises. It wasn't any harder to laugh the second time around. We still got tired and we still felt good afterward. Everyone behaved.
And--surprise, surprise--a laughter yoga class seems custom made for 14-year-old girls. Giggling and acting goofy are things they are well practiced in.
I also was happily surprised that there were no meaningful nods or elbow prods at the expense of others in the room. I guess when everyone is laughing together, it's harder to play the critical observer--another thing that teenage girls are often well practiced at.
Which brings me to the reason I like this yoga. It isn't so much the laughing, or even the goofiness of the exercises. It's the fact that you get to spend 45 minutes in a room full of people and they're all smiling and making eye contact with you the entire time. How many other times a month--or a year, for that matter--can you say that?
You're in a room where no one is casting disapproval. (Well perhaps they are, deep in their minds. But you could never tell from their faces, which are smiling. Anyway, I'm not so sure it's possible to be disapproving when you're laughing and doing crazy things.) For a social phobe like me, that's healing balm.
The person who thought this up, I am told, thinks it could hasten world peace if enough people do it. I don't know about that, but I could see it improving the clique-conscious climate of high schools and the anxiety of work. Who knows, maybe it would help the Pentagon as well.
President Obama, are you listening?