01
There is what happens and there is what we do in response to what happens, which sets us up for what happens next. And that is the full scope of our life. The quality of our response to what happens here and now determines the quality of our life through all the here's and now's of existence. We cannot live well without responding well to what happens moment-to-moment in each situation as it arises. Which raises this very interesting question: What determines the responses you make to what happens to you? Or, to put it another way: In light of what do you live? Or, one last formulation: What guides your boat on its path through the sea? There are two very basic sources of guidance: Intrinsic and extrinsic. Organic and inorganic. Heart and head. How do we know what is good? For us and for our situation? How do we assess the good? How do we determine the good? How good is the good we call good? Who says so? How do we know? Where does our idea of the good come from? How valuable has it proven to be over the course of our life? Our idea of the good is the basis of all of our responses to all that happens to us all our life long. It helps to be right about its value. Living in light of a good that is worthy of us results in a certain kind of life. Living in light of a good that is not worthy of us results in a different kind of life. What is the good we are serving with our life? That is what is guiding our boat on its path through the sea. Governing our response to what's happening now. Setting us up for what will happen next. And so it goes. All the way to the end of the line. Beware of the good you call good. And be very aware of it. From that flows everything that comes. And goes.
–0–
02
My idea of marriage has nothing to do with love and sex and everything to do with a grounding, stabilizing, relationship between two people, which creates a bond of intimacy, that leads to love and sex. Intimacy comes first, and intimacy is grounded on truth and honesty, not love and sex. People make love to avoid being intimate. People make love without ever having an honest/truthful conversation about things that deeply matter. Find someone you can talk to and marry them. Love and sex will fall into place around your conversations. The right kind of conversation is a grounding/stabilizing source of realization/enlightenment/illumination for both people-- enabling each person to find and live their own life, in balance and harmony with themselves and with the other person, and is the miracle everybody is looking for, thinking it is about love and sex, when it is about honest/truthful conversation. Honest/truthful conversation is the grounding/stabilizing force harmonizing all of life. The world is in the mess it is in because no one is talking to anyone in ways that are honest/truthful. The right kind of marriage will save the world.
–0–
03
Growing up is dying. We do not transition from one way of seeing/thinking to another way of seeing/thinking without dying. Perspective changes are death experiences. There is nothing "near" about it. The metaphor of death and resurrection is our guiding companion throughout our journey from who we have been to who we are becoming-- to who we are being asked to be. If we aren't dying, we aren't living. We are dead, dead, dead. That's the irony. We either die or we are dead. If you understand that, you are not dead, but if you don't die willingly, voluntarily, again and again, all the way, you will be dead long before some coroner makes it official. Where are you refusing to die? You can die the death that leads to life, or you can die the death that leads to being dead. Whether we live or die is strictly up to us at every point along the way. If we die, we live. If we don't die, we die. Simple as that.
–0–
04
We take our orders from another source, which makes no sense, and does not stand to reason, but, if we take it on faith, and go with it as though it is so, doors will open where doors are not apparent, and things will happen coincidentally at just the right time, and there will be help when we need it, and things will occur to us out of nowhere to guide us to places we would have never considered going, and into the company of people who say just what we most need to hear, when we most need to hear it-- and nobody could arrange our lives the way our lives turn out to be, and yet, it is as though someone has written the book and we are just reading the lines, playing the part that was assigned to us before our grandparents were born. It is magic. It is mystery. Unfolding around us. Enfolding us in it. Why isn't everyone coming along for the adventure of their life? Moment-by-moment. One situation at a time. Beginning here, now. Or you in or not? If you are in, just watch, listen, see what happens and what you need to do in response. It is that easy. And that ridiculous. Toss aside everything you think you know, and watch, listen...
