01
What are we doing with our life? Who are we becoming through the process/experience of being alive? How mindfully do we live? How conscious are we of living? Of being alive to the process/experience of being alive? What makes one day different from another? What do we mean/intend by the life we are living? In what ways are we honing, developing, applying, serving the gifts/specialties/talents/knacks/ shtick/inclinations/daemon (Sounds like "diamond") that came with us from the womb? What is better about us over the course of our life? What is unused/neglected about us? What are we dismissing, overlooking, ignoring, disregarding about us, refusing to utilize about us, rejecting and despising about us that is equivalent to the stone the builders rejected, the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price lost among the costume jewlery in the bin in the display case at the flea market? How long are we going to refuse to give ourselves a chance to show us who we are?
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02
Our days come packed with situations, and each situation comes loaded with moments capable of swinging the situation, and the day, toward better or worse, depending on how we perceive and respond to each moment in each situation throughout the day. In each moment, we can redeem or defile the previous moment-- and at every point in every moment there is the possibility of making things better or worse by the way we see what is happening, determine what is called for and do what needs to be done, point by point, moment by moment, situation by situation, day by day. That is a lot of opportunities to make things better or worse by how we play our part in doing our bit to align ourselves with the Way, enter the flow, and offer our best to the course of the day.
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03
The sure cure for what ails us-- as individuals and as a species-- is to return to the center, the axis mundi, "the still point of the turning world" (T.S. Eliot), and live from there in being true to our original nature within the context and circumstances of our life, integrating the opposites, the polarities, the contradictions, and bearing in our own body the pain/agony of the middle way, which is the central way, which is the way of the center, in living within the tension of all the extremes, as those who would be who they are anywhere, anyway, nevertheless, even so, in seeing what's what, knowing what is called for, and doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, because it needs to be done, time after time, day after day, with the gifts/talents/specialties/etc. that are ours to offer/share, as those who are being who they are, doing what is ours to do. Do not let the heaving waves of the wine dark sea distract us from the work that needs to be done even there, even here, even now! Our work is to do the work that needs us to do it! The way it needs us to do it! When it needs us to do it! No matter what. So, look around. Find something that needs doing, and do it. Properly. As properly as possible given the circumstances. Rising to every occasion, with the gift of you in hand, to see and to do. Throughout your day. Every day.
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04
It is never any more difficult than living in the service of the right thing, and the right time, and the right way, but. Who is to say what is right? Everybody has a different idea of right! What is right? How do we know? We know all the time about what is right. It is a feeling in our body, a conviction in our mind, a certainty coursing through our system. We know when it is the right time for pizza, for instance. Or for using the toilet. Or for a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine. Etc. throughout our life. And we know, in the same way, what needs to be done in response to situations as they arise, and we fail to act on our sense of what is right, then and there, a good part of the time. Perhaps always. Knowing what needs to be done is not a matter of thinking, certainly not of doing what someone else, some authority in the field, tells us to do. It is a matter of being aware of our circumstances, of the occasion before us, and of our body's response to it, to what resonates with us in terms of the action we are being called to take. The question is not, "How we we know what is right?" But, "Do we have the courage to do what we sense to be the proper course to take?" Courage is the only thing separating those who act properly from those either act incorrectly, or fail to act at all. Everybody knows what to do, or could, if they took the time to know what they know, but not everyone has what it takes to do it. "It's complicated." Because there are too many interests to please! Pare it down to what is called for here and now without complicating matters with, "But what would my donors think?" (For example). And so, gun control will never happen, and black lives will never matter enough to stop the carnage, and pregnant women will be forced to carry their unwanted pregnancy to term because somebody's god is against abortion (Or so they like to say).
