01
Courage is a function of what needs to be done. Our life calls us forth. We are here to do the bidding of time and circumstance, time and place, here and now. Too many of us spend our time trying to set things up, get things in place, to have it made. We think what we want is what needs to be done. What we want is as much interference as it is guidance, as much misdirection as it is direction. What does wanting know? Between what we want to happen and what needs to happen which do we serve? Where do we stand? Whose side are we on? How do we decide what to do? I need to be quiet. I need to be free from intrusions. I need to reduce complexity and avoid noise. Or, is it that I want those things? I do not know where wanting stops and needing starts in these matters. I know that between walking around a still pond with a camera in the evening and a cocktail party, it is the pond for me every time. I will do the pond without the camera to avoid the party. I gravitate away from people, not toward people. Introversion and extroversion are needs, not wants. We cannot help some things about ourselves. And it helps to know what those things are. And draw the lines that need to be drawn, whether we want to or not. And see what we do with what's left-- with curiosity about, and interest in, why we do what we find ourselves doing.
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02
There is experience, and there is interpretation of experience. The way we interpret experience determines the meaning the experience has for us, determines what we learn from the experience, determines what we do about the experience. Interpretation of the past swings the future. The way we see things becomes how we say things are, becomes how things are for us and those like us-- but. How are things apart from our interpretation of them? How are things "just come"? How are things "in themselves"? We have no idea. We do not see things as they are. We see things as we interpret them to be. As we say they are. We are born into an interpretive view of the world-- into a culture that views the world in ways it has been taught--and the way it teaches-- the world is. We grow up with those who see the world as it has been interpreted to them from birth. We ratify what we have been told with our own experience, which we can only experience through our "inherited" interpretation of experience, which is to say, through the "experience" of those who have gone before us. How the world is apart from our interpretive heritage, we have no idea. We can only see how we have been told to see, which is how we see. Seeing new things happens when we meet people with a different interpretive heritage. And when we sit quietly in reflective openness, and imagine a world other than it "is." How many ways are there to see a light bulb, or God? That's how many light bulbs and gods there are. Interpretation of reality shapes/forms reality. How do we see what is there without projecting onto what we look at what we have always seen? How do we see without seeing our interpretations before we see what we are looking at? How do we see what we look at in ways that take the way we see into account? Perspective determines perception. How we see what we look at determines what we see. How do we get outside of our eyes to see? How can we see until we do?
