03
Musing on our Original Nature, our Virtues, and our Character opens up pathways of reflection that lead to new realizations. What are the things that make us us, that separate us from the crowd, that stand us apart and identify us as distinct from every other person-- that are to our psyche as our fingerprints are to our soma? Would you recognize yourself if you heard someone else describing you? Would you say, "Hey! That's me you are talking about!"? Do you know you well enough to see you through someone else's eyes? How do you enhance, deepen, broaden, expand, your relationship with your psyche-side? How do you come to recognize the qualities you possess? If you were to deliberately act like yourself, what would you do? If you were going to over-emphasize those things that are characteristically you (The way you would if you were doing your best John Wayne imitation), what would you do? What qualities, characteristics, virtues are you particularly proud of? How do you bring them into play in your life? Musing on our Original Nature, our Virtues, and our Character opens up pathways of reflection that lead to new realizations.
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02
Original Nature leads the way. Relying on our Original Nature to guide us is simply falling back on who we are in meeting the requirements of each here and now-- after Carl Jung's quote: "We are who we always have been, and who we will be." That is all we need to do all we need to be, wherever and whenever we are-- with this caveat: "In ways fitting to the occasion." We cannot impose ourselves on our circumstances. We are here to honor Yin/Yang, to bear the pain of our contradictions, to bear the pain of the tension of mutually exclusive opposites, and incarnate the truth of who we are within the hostile circumstances of our daily life. This is what Jesus did and it killed him. Whether we die literally as Jesus did, or metaphorically as working parents do daily, as working people do daily, doing what it takes to pay the bills in order to do what we pay the bills to do. It is a contrary that pushes us to the limit, and William Blake reminds us, "Without contrary is no progression." Dancing with our contraries all along the way of life, is the way of life, and the way to life. We live to be who we are within the time and place of our living, working to make where we are more like it ought to be than it is, becoming ourselves more like we are than we are yet-- taking our place in the long line of our ancestors who rose to the occasion every day of their life, and made things better by the way they lived, and were a grace and a blessing upon all who came their way.
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01
The people who don't care about the impact of their actions are a threat and a danger to the people who do care about the things the people who don't care don't care about. It takes caring about things working for things to work. But, there is a catch. Just as we can care too little, we also can care too much. Caring is a tricky act of balance and harmony. Thin is the line and fine is the balance among not enough, just right and too much. If we are going to care, we have to care enough to get it right. That means monitoring the moment, moment-by-moment. Seeing the nature of our impact on what's happening and what needs to happen, and adjusting our influence to moderate/adjust the effect we are having on the time and place of our living. We have to know what we are doing and what that is doing, and what we need to do about that. We have to pay attention, we have to be aware, we have to be alert, we have to know what's what and what has to be done in response to it, moment-by-moment, situation-by-situation, day-by-day. And we learn as we go. The way we live will teach us how we need to live throughout our life. Throw away the rules and the recipes, and simply see what you look at, and know what you know, and let that be your guide as to how to respond to what is happening over time. It's like learning to ice skate, roller skate, walk and ride a bike. We don't find "the sweet spot" and rigidly remain in place. We wobble a lot. Now we have it, oops, now we don't, ah, now we do... Controlled wobbles, all our life long. But. We have to care enough to care at all.
