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(Auto-generated)Welcome back, you wonderful people who matter so very, very much. I'm WS Walker and this

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is the Laughing Matters Podcast. Now towards the end of the last episode, I proposed a

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toast to you. And I'm going to do the same thing again today and hold off a minute on

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pausing the show and getting something to toast with me. But a toast regarding whatever

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it is that's going on with you at the moment. Whatever the most prevalent issue in your

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life is right this very second. Whatever it is that your mind keeps getting drawn towards

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and is currently bringing the most stress to the table. Well, I'm not going to solve

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it for you. That's not what this toast is about. I can't solve it for you. Each problem

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has their own individual nuanced right answer solution. But I can offer some tools for dismantling

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it to find the right answer to it. The answer that puts the most good out in the world.

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You just have to remember to use those tools when you need them. You have to remember that

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these tools exist when you need them. That's your end of the deal. But for just a second

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here, I want to be one human being that you apparently like listening to, telling you

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that I'm hopeful for you, that I'm rooting for you, that I believe you have it in you

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and that ultimately you've got this if you want this. That I believe you will choose

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to do good by them. And hey, if you need any advice on how to use these tools, some of

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my book in action, so to speak, reach out and send me a message. I'll put my contact

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details in the description of the episode. I have information and understandings that

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you won't hear anywhere else and advice has been a superpower of mine. I'm good at a

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broad spectrum of stuff, but I call the stuff that I'm really great at my superpowers. But

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enough tooting my own horn. More importantly than my help, God's got this. If you let

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him, you know, not choosing the right solution and electing not to do the right thing usually

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results from avoiding personal discomfort or because doing the right thing would act

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against whatever preference that people have set for themselves. So here's a toast to

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letting God lead for all the reasons that I've previously laid out. So go ahead and

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grab a glass, but don't fill it up yet because I've got a unique suggestion for this toast.

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What's two things you've heard superstition wise about toasting someone? You never toast

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with an empty glass. That's one, and that makes sense to me. You know, it parallels

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too close to making an empty statement of agreement, to going through the pageantry

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and motions of supporting what's being toasted, but with no actual content or belief in it.

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So that makes sense to me. That's easy to see why someone would nudge you and be like,

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hey, don't do that. But the other superstition that immediately springs to mind is you never

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toast with water. Well, why is that? The super short version of the history of it is the

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ancient Greeks thought that offering water to the gods would be considered too bland

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and would anger the gods. They also thought it was reminiscent of the dead drinking the

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water from the river Styx, which is something the dead did because it took away their memories

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of the life they lived. So that's where the superstition comes from, and I'd like to address

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both of these. Firstly, when I sit on my porch and I talk to God, I like to have a glass

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of water with me. It's kind of similar to having a beer with a friend or a parent. And

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yes, I toast God with it as well, even if it's a simple friendly cheers. So why water? Well,

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I feel more interconnected with God when I drink water. I mean, it's one of the purest

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and most necessary ingredients to life. It's good for you pretty much every time you imbibe

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it. And the only components that are more immediately necessary are air and temperate

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climate. And if I filled up my glass with room temperature air, well, I already stated

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why I kind of agree with the not toasting with an empty cup tradition. Having a glass

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of water with God, it's the closest that I can get to filling my glass with pure life.

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So while taking some notes for this episode, I played a hunch and I looked up how many

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times the word water appears in various religious texts. In the Holy Quran, 63 times. That's

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about once every 10 pages or so. The Torah? I could not find a count. But likening the

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Torah itself to water is described as a staple in rabbinic writing. So that's a pretty good

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sign, right? In the Tripitaka, which is a sacred text of Buddhism, the highest level

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of Nirvana is likened to the merging of a droplet of water to the sea. And I'll read

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the next bit from the research collection directly. In Buddhism, water symbolizes life,

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the purest form of food. And water is the particular element, which in nature carries

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everything together. Water symbolizes purity, clarity, and calmness, and reminds us to cleanse

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our minds and attain the state of purity. Okay, so we're banging out all cylinders

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so far. But the Bible is a whole different matter. Water is mentioned a total of 722

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times, which is a lot more often than the word hope, which is pretty cool. Prayer, which

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is a big one. Worship, and in this one shocked me. Faith, which appears about 336 to 458

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times depending on the translation version. It literally appears roughly twice as often

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as the word faith. So this to me seems like it's the action of raising a glass of some

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of the most important stuff on earth, stuff that acts in similar ways to the highest level

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of Nirvana, the Torah, and the Holy Spirit itself. And I believe God probably recognizes

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the symbolic gesture there. And if he minds me doing it, he's given me the opposite reaction

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impressions. We'll leave it at that. So all of that aside, let's just consider

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Amoto's water experiments, in which he took different jars of water, played different

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types of music for them, spoke to them with different tones. Some were told, you disgust

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me, while others were told that they were loved. And then he froze them and took photos

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through a microscope of the crystallized structures that were formed at the top. He also took

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some water from a badly polluted dam and photographed the freezing crystallizations before and after

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a Buddhist monk prayed over it. I highly, highly recommend looking up this guy's photography

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on these. It's Imoto. He's Neko, M is Mike, O is an October, T is Ntango, O is an October.

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Please look up Imoto water. Because you see, those that were subjected to beautiful music

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or phrases or words that were positive in nature, when frozen, they produced beautiful,

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simple, but also complex structures with radial symmetry. And the jars subjected to negative,

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hateful phrases and music were not symmetrical and were rather ugly and unappealing to look

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at. The photos of the dam water looked deadly and sickening. But once the water was prayed

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over, it produced the most beautiful, but complex crystalline structure of all of them.

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Now, okay, it's true that scientists had a field day with pointing out that the photos

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could have been cherry picked and decided from hundreds of photos, allowing the outcome

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to be swayed. But as someone who has dealt with photographing microscopic details that

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are not pressed on a slide, I can tell you that it is enormously difficult to get a picture

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of anything given the extreme shallowness of depth of field. If you've ever seen this

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type of photography before, you'll notice that everything but part of the photograph

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is out of focus. And that's before accounting for lens fogging and freezing temperatures,

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which is a nightmare. Now, there was a scientist out there that undertook replicating the results

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in a controlled environment and following the strict protocols demanded in order to

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produce scientifically sound evidence. But he had to take hundreds of photographs in

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order to capture just a few in focus ones. Now, he attempted to overcome this issue of

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cherry picking these photos to represent each result by posting them all online and asking

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people to rate the beauty of what was in each photo and then plotted each jar's results

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on a graph to compare. Now, sadly, with hundreds of out of focus photos in the mix, the results

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were inconclusive. But don't fret, because luckily, literally hundreds of people out

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there have taken it upon themselves to perform a MOTO's RICE experiment. And it's very simple.

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You can do it at home. What you do is you get three mason jars and fill them halfway

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up with white rice. And then fill the rest of each jar with clean water from the same

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source. And then you screw down or latch down airtight lids. You take them and place them

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in three different locations, but with similar temperature and sun exposure conditions. The

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only thing that should be different from each jar is how you treat each jar. With the first

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jar, you make nothing but loving statements, telling it how proud you are of it, how happy

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it makes you, compliment it, and always make a point to acknowledge it with a smile. Be

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that jar's loving support and hype man at least once a day. The second jar, you yell

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at or put down or telling it how much you hate it or how ugly it is and how much of

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a waste it is or how you never should have assembled the rice jar and water to make such

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an idiotic thing. Really, lay into it at least once a day. And the third jar, make a point

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to never look at it or acknowledge. If you do look at it, avert your gaze quickly and

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forget about it as quickly as you can. Do not acknowledge this jar at all. This jar

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is the control of the experiment and shows what happens to the rice without any involvement.

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It's nature taking its course. You see, just like Modo did, those hundreds of people performed

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these actions and interactions with the jars for 30 days straight, and then opened the

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jars. The loved jar of rice most often looks very regular, uniform white, and smells okay,

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if not sweet. Our untouched control jar still grows mold, sometimes greenish, sometimes

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yellowish, and sometimes with speckles of black. When opened, most report an unpleasant

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smell. But the hated jar always rots straight black down the middle, and its smell is absolutely

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putrid. So not only does water react to hate in a very, very ugly way, feeding it kindness

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and love, and other positive emotions, preserves it, makes it better, and restores. Just like

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us. Interesting. Why do I bring this up? All I'm saying is that there is far more to water

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than just a boring, colorless, tasteless drink. Someone recently pointed out to me that the

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flavor of water is the temperature at which it's served, which I found weirdly accurate.

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So I hope this addresses the superstition that it would anger the gods for being bland.

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It's pretty much the most interesting, communicative liquid there is. Now, as to the parallel drawn

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to drinking waters from the River Styx, all I have to say is, which liquid is more likely

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to impede your memory and has more of a chance of you ending up in the River Styx early?

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Water or alcohol? Come on, y'all. So that said, pause the show and fill up a glass.

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And let's toast.

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Alright, glasses up. God, thank you for all of this, and for helping where you've helped.

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Please help us to find those solutions and to help us know which one is not just best

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for me, but best for all of them. It's impossible for us to know outright with certainty what

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the best decisions are because we can't know all of their consequences. And right now,

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I have stuff going on that I am not certain what I'm going to do about it. So please navigate

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for this blind pilot. And here's to you, you wonderful Creator that matters so very, very

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much.

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Cheers.

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And remember, going outside, taking off your glasses, and having a drink of water with

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God, that's something you can do nearly any time. You can ask His advice on any subject,

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have a chat, pretty much whenever you feel like doing so. So why aren't you talking to

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God all the time? That's a question I ask to you, but also to me. And distractions would

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be my inherent answer to that. There are so many of them that fill my day, and what time

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I do have away from work is actively searching for something to fill it. But entertainment

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offers a very one-sided deal. You don't have to do much or anything at all to spend an

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entire day entertaining your mind one way or another. It's kind of pure gimme in that

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way. Except it does cost something, something we'd rather not think about. It costs you

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time, which is taken from a container that you cannot ever know how far it is from empty.

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So I'm just saying, finding a quiet spot to sit outside with a glass of water can go a

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long way towards reducing potential distractions. Talking to God about your problems, I mean,

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outside of Him helping you, just talking to Him can help tremendously. Because there's

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this really interesting thing that happens when we're dealing with a source of stress

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and thinking about it. The brain, when something is bothering us, has this weird tendency to

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act like our vision. Now before in the book, I'd talked about how we take in new information,

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and we tend to discard any new information that is baseline, unchanged, or predictable.

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Like looking out at your backyard and not taking in every blade of grass. Instead, you

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just scan for anything new or out of place. Well, our vision, when you first look at something,

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works a lot like a mind toiling over conflict. When you're taking in a new sight, you don't

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just look at the whole thing at once and take in all the information as one completely in

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focus picture. Instead, if you watch someone's eyes as they look at something for the first

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time, their eyes dart all around it, piecing together a mental understanding and forming

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a picture of said new thing. So I want you to try something here. I want you to close

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your eyes without thinking about it right away. Just do it. Close them. Unless you're

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driving, do not close them if you are driving and listening to the podcast. But otherwise,

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you're not listening. When you open them again, not yet, but when you do, I want you

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to try to notice the first places your eyes go to and piecing together the environment

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that you're in. Go ahead and open them. You see, the eye darts around all over, but it

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always starts with whatever it is that has the most contrast to the rest, whatever it

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is that stands out the most. And then it starts to look at the other parts that stand out.

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The thing that stands out the most always comes back to that. And when you're thinking

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about something that you're stressing over, that's causing you mental anguish, your brain

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does the same thing. It keeps coming back to that biggest hurt or that biggest conflicting

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piece of information, the thing you do not understand about the situation or the thing

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that is hurting you the most. And it bats against it like a moth against a light bulb.

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And it may examine other information, but it keeps coming back to that. And when you

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talk about something, when you express the situation that you're in, when you tell someone

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else about what you're going through, because they aren't you, they're not working from

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your quote unquote file cabinet, you have to lay it out for them in a chronological

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order. You have to organize it to put it out. And in doing that, just in talking about it,

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you are putting things together in an A to B to C to D fashion instead of A to B to A

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to C to A to D to A to A to A to A to C A to D A to B, maybe some A to B, B, B, A, A,

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A, Y, A. Instead, you think about it in a way that makes sense. You actively make a

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productive step towards making sense of it. Have you ever noticed when you go to a friend

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with a problem and you start telling them about it, half the time you make it halfway

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through, you already know what it is that you need to do about it. You may not want

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to face that that's the case, but you typically kind of figure it out as you talk about it.

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Believing to God is great for that. He's not going to tell anybody, by the way, you can

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trust him. I'd say give it a think, but give it a talk and grab you a glass of water. Now

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this is kind of a weird episode if you're new to the show, but if you are in fact new

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to the show, welcome. Firsters and seconders will back me up and tell you that you do,

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you need to go back and you need to listen to the book, which is season one of the podcast.

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It starts at preface and ends at chapter 10, the strings. So go back and listen to that

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before progressing or you are going to miss out on a lot of context on what's going on

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with the new episodes. You can listen to the episode before this one, episode 17, if you

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want to skip the preface, but go ahead. Stop here, listen to the book and we'll see you

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in like a week or so. But oh, before you go, good luck. You know, you don't know. Good

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luck. You very well may not want to think about or examine as closely as we do in the

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book, but I think you'll also see why it's so important that we do. So the rest of you

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be good to them, be good for them and you're going to be phenomenal. This is WS Walker

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signing off. Be sweet.