November 11, 2023 – A

People kill themselves
and other people
because they don't like the way
things are going.

Why don't they just change their mind
about what is important?

Changing our mind about what is important
is the solution 
to all of our problems today.
Every day.

The right kind of meditation practice
is about changing our mind about what is important.

Sitting in emptiness, stillness and silence
is a shift in emphasis
regarding what is important.

Allowing things to arise of their own accord
is so different
from forcing our will for the world upon the world.

"Thy will not mine be done,"
when the "thy" is simply the drift of circumstances,
the flow of life,
what needs to happen here/now,
and getting out of the way
in order that what needs to happen
is allowed to happen,
is the grounding foundation
of all that is meet and right.

Joseph Campbell has a wonderful meditation
on Carl Jung's term "Active Imagination,"
where he says,
"If  you take in some traditional image proposed to you by your own religious tradition, or your own society's religious lore, proposing it to yourself for active imagination, without any strict game rules defining the sort of thoughts you must bear in mind in relation to it, letting your own psyche enjoy and develop it (carrying you away into thoughts and images that arise spontaneously, of their own accord--JD), you may find yourself running into imageries, experiences, and amplifications that do not fit into the patterns of the tradition in which you have been trained. What are you going to do about that? Are you going to let yourself go, following your own activated imagination? Or, are you going to cut the run short at some critical point?"

Are we going to go with what needs to happen,
or stick with someone's idea of what is supposed to happen?
Are we going to trust ourselves to the inner thrust of our life,
or impose our will and wants on the world around us,
killing ourselves or someone else
when things don't go our way?

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