June 28, 2022

01

Take it standing up
and ask them if that's
the best they got.

You can do it with the right perspective,
attitude,
frame of mind. 

Perspective is a super power,
transforming everything
and transforming us to deal appropriately
with everything.

There is nothing that the right perspective
can't improve.

Step into your life
with the right perspective,
and watch things fall right into place
around that.

It is amazing what perspective can do.

But don't take my word for it.
Pull out your own perspective
and shine that baby up.
Put the "Nothing can happen to me
that I can't improve
by the way I think about it" to it,
and take it around the block
a time or two.
And then take it on the road.
See what happens.
You'll be amazed.

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02

Alan Watts asked Joseph Campbell,
"Joe, What form does your yoga take?"
Campbell replied,
"I underline passages."

Yoga is looking/seeing.

What form does YOUR yoga take?

I also underline passages,
and look out the window,
and take photographs,
and mull things over,
and ask the questions
that beg to be asked,
and say the things
that cry out to be said,
and do the things 
that need to be done--
when, where and how 
they need to be done--
in each situation as it arises,
no matter what,
with nothing it it for me
beyond the joy of doing it
and the satisfaction of having done it.

And seeing arises of its on accord
in its own time,
in its own way.

Mixed motives kill seeing.
You cannot be looking to see
and looking for what is in it for you.
There may be a monetary reward in seeing,
but it is beside the point,
a secondary consideration.

I occasionally sell a photograph.
I do not take a picture
with marketing it in mind.

If you are looking for the wrong thing,
you will not see what is there.

Columbus was looking for India,
spices and cities of gold,
fountains of youth,
and the northwest passage,
and never appreciated what he found.

If you want to see,
you have to look with innocence,
integrity,
sincerity,
spontaneity
from the heart,
to see what is there.

And be enjoying the search.

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03

The Dalai Lama said, on the Chinese occupation of Tibet,

“If, in any situation, there is no solution, 
there is no point in being anxious. 
If the forces at work 
have their own momentum, 
and what’s going on now 
is the product of what went before, 
and if this generation is not in control 
of all those forces, 
then this process will continue.”

He is saying we have to know what we can do
and what we cannot do,
what can be done
and what cannot be done.

He is saying we cannot will
what cannot be willed.

And that some things 
have to play themselves out
over time.

Everything plays itself out over time.

The pendulum swings
according to its own pleasure.
And when we have done all we can do,
we have to wait for the tide to turn.

The tide always turns
in its own time.

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