August 5, 2020

03

Everything comes from our imagination
embedded in our psyche. 

We have what we need
to find
(or build,
or make/create)
what we need
to do what needs to be done.

We have but to believe that it is so,
and live as though it is.
This is the critical part:
believing and living as if it is so.

We have to stop jamming the signals
from our own body!

There is what is happening,
and there is how we feel about what is happening.

How we feel about what is happening
can be so all-consuming
that we can think about nothing else.
We are overwhelmed.
The intensity of our fear/dread/anxiety/hatred/etc.
is so great that we turn to opioids
or alcohol/etc. 
to numb us to the point of feeling nothing.
And that keeps us from doing
what needs to be done
in response to what is happening.
Which puts us on a steep downward spiral,
with bad becoming worse by the minute
until we reach a point of staring blankly
into space until some undertaker 
takes us away.

And, all the time,
we had what we needed
to find what we needed
to do what needed to be done
about what was happening.

But we didn't want to do that.
We wanted things to be smooth and easy
without having to do anything 
we didn't want to do
to have it that way.

At some point,
we have to grow up enough
to do what we don't want to do
in order for things to be as good as they can be
for ourselves and others--
which may not be at all what we want 
things to be.

We have what we need but.
We have to be willing to do what needs to be done
to access it and put it into play.

Negotiation,
compromise,
adjustment
and accommodation
are the tools 
we have to become proficient with--
and that means coming to terms
with the fact that
"the best is the enemy of the good,"
and we can have a good-enough life
if we don't have to have the best life we want,
and refuse to settle for anything less.

We have to be capable of growing up
to have a chance in this world.

If we are capable of growing up,
we have what we need 
to find what we need
to do what needs to be done.

We only have to believe it is so
and live as if it is.

–0–

02

Hope is not what we have.
It is what we do.

Hope is doing what needs to be done
in every situation as it arises,
without caring what our chances are
in any situation.

We are the hope of the world!
How we live matters!

What really matters
is living as though all of this is so!

Living as if the right things are so
is indistinguishable from the right things being so!

Living as if the right things are so
makes them so!

All we have to do is be clear 
about what the right things are
and live as if they are so!

Hope does not quit!
Hope does not give up!
Hope does not stop!
Hope does not even slow down!

Hope does not wait for conditions
to be favorable.
Hope sees what is called for
in every situation 
and lives in its service
no matter what!
Anyway!
Nevertheless!
Even so!

Joseph Campbell said,
"In certain Native American tribes, 
the parents would tell their children,
"As you leave home
to find your way in the world,
the birds of the air will shit on you.
Do not pause even to wipe it off."

That must be our attitude 
as we live in the service of hope in the world.
We do not give our opposition
an opportunity to slow us down!
We have work to do,
and we aren't stopping
until it's done!

–0–

01

To be transparent to ourselves
is to be "transparent to transcendence"
(Joseph Campbell's term),
so that in seeing us,
people see That Which Has Always Been Called God.
Then, "the Father and I are One."
And that is the whole point of the entire show.

Saying anything more obscures the point,
conceals the show.