This is Home to all pages written in October of 2020. Hovering your pointer over a month listed in the header will drop down the daily posts for the month. Thanks for visiting. Stay safe and be well!
September 30, 2020
02
Safety, security, stability are the three foundational necessities for life as we would like to live it. They are as much an internal orientation as they are an external reality. Someone who has been physically/sexually/emotionally abused, and place them in a safe/secure/stable environment, and it will take them forever to feel safe/secure/stable. Take someone who has been betrayed, and how long will it be before they can trust themselves to anyone? This is where establishing, deepening and maintaining a vitally alive relationship with our inner self becomes essential. What keeps us going if not knowing who/what we can count on? Who/what is the most reliable source of helpful presence in our life than the two million year old person within who comes packed in the DNA of each of us to comfort and console, guide and direct, us on our way through the contexts and circumstances of our daily walk? Why don't we devote ourselves to the care and tending of our relationship with the Other within? What do you think Marianne Moore meant when she said, "The cure for loneliness is solitude"? Who do we find waiting for us in our solitude but The One Who Is With Us Always? Our "Two Million Year Old Self" (Anthony Stevens, Carl Jung) is an aspect of our Unconscious Mind (So-called because we are not conscious of it), and is "The One Who Knows" within who we experience as "A Very Present Help In Time Of Trouble," and is the origin of our "holy nudges," and "sudden inspirations," and "providential realizations," and "propitious interventions" in the form of things that occur to us "out of the blue," and change our course to "save the day" and more than that. Where would any of us be without our "invisible means of support" (Bill Moyers)? Each of us is born with all we need to find what we need to make our way through our life. Why do we ignore that, or despise it, in favor of "blind guides" and bad bets?
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01
Britain felt worse during the endless days of World War II. And Rome during the forever-long collapse of the Caesars. The people who have felt worse-- and faced worse-- through the bitter winds of time from the beginning until now would not fit within the confines of this country or all countries on this planet. So stop your whining. Nothing is free. We walked into the voting booths in 2016-- or didn't vote at all-- thinking it didn't matter what we did. Has anybody ever been more wrong over the full sweep of time? Our assumptions, expectations and the things we took for granted have us here, now. We did not know what we were doing. We did not care what we did. And we are looking for someone to fix it for us. To make it go away. "We did it to our ownselves." And it will be a long time gone. So put your walking shoes on, and step into doing what needs to be done, one day at a time for as long as it takes to be at a better place, individually and collectively. Start by voting for Joe Biden. And by being right about what's important. And being willing to go to hell for what is, because we will certainly go to hell for what isn't. And knowing when your assumptions are invalid and your expectations are groundless, and when you are failing to tend your responsibilities to democracy and all the values worth living for-- and being who we all need each other to be for as long as life shall last.
September 29, 2020
04
Consistency, reliability, dependability... Can we maintain our connection with the center? Can we remain on the path? Can we retain our focus amid the Clashing Rocks on the Heaving Waves of the Wine Dark Sea? It is one thing to grasp the truth of what is needed in the silence of circumstances that are routine and predictable, but. Enter the unfathomable. Put the Gauls or the Visigoths at the gates! Remove the norms and standards. Introduce uncertainty. Destroy the systems and institutions that hold life together. Or, just take to bed with a migraine for two days. See how you do. An old Zen adage applies: "The ability of the archer to hit the bullseye, varies in inverse proportion to the size of the prize for doing so." "AUM" is the first thing to go when the cat has diarrhea and the electricity goes off at 2 AM. Where is the center then? What happens to our focus then? Who has time for the balm of realization then? Then the time has come for action! What directs our movement in the field of action? What leads us there, then? What becomes of us there, then? Can we disappear there, then? And become one with the action? The dancer becomes the dance! The singer becomes the song! The musician becomes the music! The Force is always with us, but. Can we be one with the force? Can we become the Force? Can we become the Tao? Dancing with Yin and Yang in the Here and Now? Gracing the situation with exactly what is needed? Spontaneously? Improvisationally? Without stopping to think, "What would Jesus do?"? Can we become Grace in Action? That's how illumined we are! How enlightened we are! How awakened we are! Can we disappear and be what is needed in the time and place of our living regardless of the circumstances? That is the test of our connection with the center and ground, The Source and the flow of our existence.
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03
We are never more than a slight shift in perspective away from having it made. We are never more than that far away from Nirvana, from illumination, from awakening, from enlightenment, from Christ-consciousness and Buddha-mind. It all comes down to being right about the way we see things. To being right about what is important. Seeing things with right seeing makes all the difference. How we see is a function of how we look. Of asking the questions that beg to be asked. Of hearing the things that cry out to be heard. Of saying the things that are dying to be said. Of knowing what we know, and what can be known, and what cannot be known. Instead of imposing our view of reality upon reality-- instead of imposing our ideas about how things are upon how things are-- we wait in the silence to see, to hear, to know, to understand. When we reflect on what is before us-- upon what is happening and what that means for us and for the situation as it arises-- to the point of new realizations, we are at the fulcrum, being levered by forces quite beyond us to seeing with new eyes, which makes all things new. And that is IT!
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02
There is nothing like coming to terms with how things are-- and also are (Which is how things actually are)-- for enabling us to let things be without emotional reactivity that interferes with how things actually are, and creates complexity, upheaval, disruption and chaos on all levels simultaneously, wreaking havoc, destruction, devastation and misery everlasting. Here's the deal: We live on the boundary, the border line, the interface, the pivot point, the fulcrum between how things are and how things ought to be in each moment in each situation as it arises day-by-day all our life long. And how we respond to what is happening in that moment makes all the difference. The key to being able to do right by the moment that is at hand in every moment that comes along is caring enough about the right things in the right way to do what needs to be done without interfering with what is happening or getting in the way of what needs to happen. The right kind of caring is the difference between being helpful and being intrusive, between being engaged for the good of the whole without being co-dependent and overly invested in the outcome. We have to live in each moment as those who care enough about what is happening to offer the best we have to give in the service of the good of the whole without being meddlesome, over-wrought, strung-out, and personally in need of things happening in a particular way, to the extent that we try to will what cannot be willed and force things to happen that cannot be forced. We have to take things seriously enough to do what is needed/necessary, in the right spirit, with the right frame of mind, without taking things seriously at all. This is called "maintaining working distance" between ourselves and the situation. Close enough to care without having anything at stake. Caring enough to give what we have to offer with nothing to gain and nothing to lose. To live out of that place is to be always "at the still point of the turning world" (T.S. Eliot). The trick with that is understanding there is no static way of being in the daily interplay of life. The "still point" is not stationary! The still point that enables us to ride a bicycle is within a range of controlled wobbles! The same thing applies to the still point of living in balance and harmony with our life-- and all of life! Caring enough without caring too much! Offering what is ours to give to each moment of our living without contriving to arrange a particular result/end/outcome! Letting things come and go according to the rhythm of their own timing, and honoring, thereby, the tides of life and living and being alive! This is the art of being human.
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01
So much goes on behind the scenes, unseen, unknown, it's a travesty and a betrayal of trust, and we all should be ashamed, and aware-- transparent to ourselves, if not to everyone else, and they to us. At least, we could be sincere about our lack of sincerity. But who can risk absolute sincerity? Who can be that vulnerable, that known? We hide things from ourselves! How sincere is that? We cannot bear the truth of our own truth! And other people know things about us we do not know ourselves! It is staggering-- the duplicity, the deception-- and essential! Necessary! Unavoidable! Because we need a double life to have a life at all! This is the other side of Yin/Yang-- the two sides have a second side apiece! Hidden from themselves! Our Shadow has a shadow! This is getting fancy! And we have no choice but to bear our own complexity! Our complexity is a compromise enabling us to bear the strain of the tension of competing needs-- financial, emotional, physical, spiritual, practical, creative... how many aspects of us are there that have to be taken into account in order to balance the harmony of the whole? However we look at it, there is more to us than meets the eye! Any eye! And what you see-- what any of us see-- is the result of sanity management undertaken to bear the pain of getting through the day. We have to kid ourselves in order to play the game of not kidding ourselves, because otherwise it would be intolerable, and too much of a stretch to keep it going. It is what we don't know that upholds what we do know, and makes it possible to go on!
September 28, 2020
04
I would like to sit down one-on-one with everybody, and hear what they had to say. I think that is all anybody needs. Someone to hear what they have to say. Everybody wants to tell people what they need to hear. Nobody wants to hear what people have to say. I would like to change that. I've been doing it all my life. I've also been saying what I have to say. I don't hold anything back. I'm doing it here, now. I do as good a job listening and speaking as anyone I know. It's what I do best. Along with seeing. Not that I don't miss anything. Yesterday, I moved the butter out of the way looking for the butter. And last week, I left a crutch at the nursery (I was one crutching it-- I use crutches to get about because of osteoarthritis in both knees, but my left knee is worse than my right one, so I can manage for short distances with a forearm crutch on my right arm, and got distracted with buying the plants my wife and I purchased, and left my crutch behind). I didn't miss it for a couple of days (Don't use it around the house), and had no idea where it was. So, today, it occurred to me to ask at the nursery if it were there. And happy the reunion was. All of which is to say I miss things all the time. Without thinking anything of it. I keep looking and seeing, and not seeing. Listening and hearing, and not hearing. It's what I do best, and enjoy most. And I look forward to continuing to do it for long years into the far distant future. Holding the butter looking for the butter was great. I am very Zen-like some days.
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03
All religious wars are fought between/among disciples of a particular idea of religion. They are fighting over their understanding of theology, doctrine, dogma, creeds and catechisms. Over words about their religion. They disagree about what words are true and what words are false. They disagree about what they believe to be so-- to be factual, actual, real and, thus, true!-- because someone has said so. All of this changes like that (snaps fingers), when we shift from talking about belief and start talking about experience. Separate yourself from everything you have ever heard about God from all other sources including the Bible, and focus exclusively on what you have personally experienced of God in your own life. What do you know to be so because you know it is so, and not because you believe it to be so, or have heard it to be so? When we talk of our experience of God, we do not speak of the God of theology and doctrine, but of the Numen beyond all words and reason, beyond all logic and intellect. The experience of the Numen sits us down and shuts us up. Wonder and awe, amazement and fascination, do not lend themselves to words. Lao Tzu said all that can be said: "The Tao that can be said is not the eternal Tao!" There are neither wars nor disagreement among those who experience the Numen in art, music and nature, with childbirth and falling in love, or being smitten by the encounter with another human being, all being as natural as nature can be.
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02
Friedrich Nietzsche said the goal of the maturation process is to become "a wheel rolling out of its own center." I envision a gyroscope turning out of its own center as it moves in a direction suited to its purposes, stabilizing itself in tune with its own balance and harmony, and serving its own Original Nature with sincerity and compassion in all that it does. We are our own authority. We govern our own actions. We evaluate our own values. We live to ask the questions that beg to be asked in each situation as it arises. To say what cries out to be said. And to do what needs to be done here and now-- without contriving or deferring, seeking to please or fearing repercussions, but living to express our own heart and soul, and being true to ourselves in all times and places. We stand on our own feet, live out of our own center, with loyalty and devotion to our own nature, and let the outcome be the outcome. To do this, we have to devote time and attention to cultivating our relationship with ourselves so that we know who we are out of our on-going experience with what is deepest, truest and best about us all our life long.
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01
What keeps you going? You live in the service of what? What is your shtick? Your thing? Your art? Your genius? Your gift? What are you here to do? To bring forth? Exhibit? Express? Love with all your heart? Who are you here to be? No matter what? Do not stray from that! Do not wander away from the center! The core! The essence! The qualities that constitute your Original Nature! Be you wherever you are! Regardless of your circumstances! Bring your perspective forth! Dance your dance! Love your life! Love being alive! Let your love for life show! Why hold anything back? Let your little light shine! Let your little toes dance! Let your little heart love what it loves! While it can!
September 27, 2020
02
Jon Kabat-Zinn (And if you haven't watched his YouTube Videos on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction-- the shortest ones first-- what exactly are you waiting for?) said that mindfulness and meditation are like riding a bicycle. When you are learning to ride a bicycle, you think about riding the bicycle. When you learn to ride a bicycle, you quit thinking about it. The same thing applies to playing third base, hitting a curve ball (or throwing one), cooking pizza or an apple pie, and hitting high C. We think about it until we get it, and then we stop thinking about it. Always thinking about it, always thinking about how we aren't doing it, and when are we going to start doing it, and who is doing it better than we are, and why we aren't good at anything... gets in the way of doing it. Practice until we get it, then stop thinking about it, and do it. It's like learning to walk.
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01
Are you at peace with your circumstances? Are you at-one with yourself? Balance and harmony, Kid! Balance and harmony! We can gauge how well its working by our degree of balance and harmony, spirit, vitality and life. When the Clashing Rocks and Heaving Seas disturb our inner rhythm and flow, our outer life-in-the-world will be at hell's gate. We think we have to get outer all calm and peaceful in order to bring our inner world into tranquil accord. That is to have things backwards in a cart-before-the-horse kind of way. First inner, then outer. It's the old story of the Taoist Master and the Drought. The people of the drought-plagued district asked her to come and bring the rain. She arrived and shut herself into a hut in the village and three days later it rained. Asked how she did it, she replied, "When I arrived, I found things to be out of accord with the Tao and in complete disarray. So, I closed myself off from the village, and sought to make my peace with the situation, and to restore my own harmony with the Tao. And then, the rains came."
September 26, 2020
01
We have to believe in the things that keep us going. That is the true test of our faith. Can it--does it--will it--keep us going? We go in the service of what we believe in. People who have lost their faith go mostly to bars and opioids. The surest way to not lose our faith is for it to be grounded-- not in theology or doctrine or somebody else's beliefs-- but in our own experience with numinous (So-called because it is unspeakable, inexplicable, un-say-able, beyond words) reality that has grabbed us, whammed us, overwhelmed us, claimed us and made us its own. We can't think up something to believe in. We have to be stunned into stopping mid-stride by it. If we don't have an experience of the Numen it's because we have insulated ourselves against it by living loud, busy, regimented lives. We have to stop. Look. Listen. Pay attention. What's the first thing we notice? Something to make us want to escape back into busyness most likely. We run from the Numen because it lives in a dimension accessible only by going where we do not want to go. Past things we do not want to face. We had rather go to bars and opioids. It takes the Numen to keep us going. If we prefer to shut down and quit that's our business. But, we need to know we have a choice. We can sit in the silence, listening, looking for what is there with us beyond the terrors of the darkness. Trusting in what-we-do-not-know to call our name and transform our life.
September 25, 2020
02
Maintaining our focus, remaining centered, balanced, in harmonious accord with the Tao is all there is to it. Only fear, desire and duty stand in our way. And the dust of the world. And the 10,000 things. It is amazing that we can even consider focus, centering, balance and harmony. And it is not surprising at all that we have such difficulty finding our focus, our center, our balance and harmony. We only have two tools to work with: Our breath and the silence. Focusing on our breathing and seeking the silence provide us with an oasis in the wasteland. Making regular returns to our breath and the silence provide us with a sacred place amid the heaving waves and the clashing rocks-- all we need for regaining our focus, finding the center, being balanced and in harmonious accord with the Tao and at peace with our life.
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01
Sealing ourselves off from one thing, opens us up to another. We have to come to terms with our vulnerability, and settle for being as safe and as secure as we can be under the circumstances, with all things considered. Our life is a negotiated compromise with "the facts of life," taking everything into account, and being okay with our outcomes, whatever they may be-- understanding "outcome" as being just another event on the unending road of turns and how we respond to them our entire life long. Nothing lasts forever under the right perspective. We give up this to get that, and pay a price for being alive. How creative and flexible we can be, how accepting and open, how pliable and resilient, how generous and kind, how patient and yielding, how perceptive and aware, how long-suffering and considerate, how enduring and responsive... will strongly influence-- if not determine-- how lucky, blessed, and graced we are over the full course of our life. Being lucky, blessed and graced are a function of being trusting and confident in ourselves and our ability to respond appropriately to whatever is happening in each situation as it arises moment-to-moment, day-by-day without having to have things be otherwise. If everything hangs on having everything just so, we will have a hell-of-a-time receiving things "thus come," and seeing what may yet become of us-in-relationship-wth all things just as they are. Which is the very foundation of-- and the door open to-- the wonder and glory of the adventure of being alive. No adventure is what we expect it will be. Insisting and demanding that our adventure be what we want it to be rules out any possibility of adventure from the start. We belong to the road. The road rules. Our place is to laugh and dance along the way. How we respond to the gifts of the road makes all the difference.
September 24, 2020
02
Ambition, incentive, aspiration are all over-hyped. Who knows what to want? Who wants what should be wanted? Who can be forced to want what they ought to want? So, you spend your life in the service of things that don't matter, thinking they matter, working for prestige, status and stature, dry as desert dust where you heart should be because you've never loved anything more than money for as long as you can remember, with no mulligans to bail you out and only regret for company. Who wants that? Who thought that was what they were getting? It's always going to be different this time. How often is it really? How many people are right about what matters? Ambition in the service of the wrong things is worse than no ambition at all. A life without ambition is a life devoted to living aligned with the Tao-- with the movement of the heavens and the rhythm of the tides, without contrivance and with complete sincerity, being in the moment for the good of the moment, with nothing to gain and nothing to lose, trusting ourselves to find ways of being good for ourselves and true to ourselves in the service of the good of the here and now of our living. We walk two paths at the same time: Paying the bills and living the life that is our life to live, that calls our name, that fills our heart, that is our soul's true joy. If you are going to aspire to something, aspire to that!
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01
We spend our lives fighting life, thinking it is about one thing, when it is about another. "Climbing the ladder of success," as the old one-liner goes, "only to discover the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall." Chasing down "Fortune and glory, Kid, fortune and glory," with our soul's true joy languishing and dying for lack of attention and devotion. Munching on the Forbidden Fruit, with eyes for the bright lights and action of Gay Paree, we miss the white rabbit from another dimension inviting us to the adventure of being alive, and settle for shiny beads and silver mirrors while the hope of the gods for us flickers and fades away. We are never more than a shift in perspective away from seeing, hearing and understanding. But. We don't ask the questions that beg to be asked, or hear the things that are crying out to be heard, or say the things that are trying to be heard. And. Are too busy dying to realize we have never lived. What's it going to take? All of the prophets and seers, teachers and Bodhisattvas are stumped by that one. "When the student is ready, the teacher appears," and in the meantime, the teachers gather, shaking their heads, saying, "What's it going to take?" The Native Americans were savvy as hell, and idiot sportsmen looking for a thrill wiped out their buffalo/bison in ten years. Stupidity wins and loses at the same time, certain it knows what it is doing, wondering what went wrong, and who is at fault for things not being as they are supposed to be. Who put the ladder against the wrong wall?
September 23, 2020
02
If we are going to take anything on faith, let it be the actuality of the Unknown Knower within! Take the Psyche we are unconscious of on faith! And work to develop a relationship with her-- a relationship of mutual respect, dependence, and collaboration-- throughout the remainder of the time left for living! Consider the Psyche to be of another dimension, and consider our conscious mind to be the connection, the contact point, between the world of normal, apparent, physical reality and the world of paranormal, invisible, spiritual reality (We call it "spiritual" because it is invisible and cannot be weighed, measured, counted or willfully engaged, and anything we say about the "spiritual dimension" is something someone made up, invented, imagined). I'm making-up, inventing, imagining this as I go, but play along, and live as if it is so, and it will be evident that it is so in a short matter of time-- which is exactly the same spiel those who invite you to take their theology/doctrine/dogma on faith use to bolster their claim to the reality of which they speak. Experiential confirmation/affirmation of things we take on faith is characteristic of the species! It is the grounding foundation of black magic, voodoo, superstition, human/animal/vegetable sacrifice astrology, horoscopes, religion, and True Love. We live as if something is so. As if winning is better than losing, for instance, or being wealthy is better than being poor. We make up the importance of everything we think is important. We take it on faith that we are right about the value of what we call valuable, that we know what we are doing, that the good we call good is good... We take tomorrow on faith, and what remains of today. So what's the problem with Psyche being a knowing source of guidance and direction, worth and value? And devoting ourselves to learning her language, attending her ways, and living in accord with her purposes and leanings?
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01
We are looking for the energy, the enthusiasm, the flow of life... For what resonates with us, attracts us, calls us, urges us, compels us into its service. How long has it been? We have been making up reasons to live for about as many years as we have been living. Finding things to live for. Thinking up things we might like to do. Trying all of the latest trends... Hoping something clicks. And lasts. Dismissing, discounting, disregarding, ignoring every inclination that can't be justified, explained, excused, defended. Well. Here is a suggestion that can't be justified, explained, excused, defended. Get used to such things, and to living with the wind of the sprit that blows where it will forever in your hair! Take up sitting quietly, seeking the Source-- not out of desperation, and with no pressure attached, but with interest, curiosity and expectation-- wondering what might be on the other side of silence, and how you will know if anything is. Sit waiting, listening, watching, wondering, as often as you can work it into your week. Make a ritual of it. Set aside a specific time of the day. Sit in a particular place, for an allotted amount of time, with a good faith commitment to the process and to honoring what arises in the silence with a will for adventure, and filial devotion to the cause, and see what comes.
September 22, 2020
03
To eyes that see, ears that hear, and hearts that understand, our fate provides us with exactly what we need to fulfill our destiny. Joseph Campbell said, “Love your enemies and what you hate most about your life because they are instruments of your destiny.” We are pulled forth, against our will, and thrust into the trials and ordeals that are necessary to produce and refine the character and qualities most needed to fulfill our destiny. Campbell said, “It took the Cyclops to bring out the hero in Ulysses.” Lao Tzu asked, “Fame or integrity, which is more important? Money or happiness, which is more valuable? Success or failure, which is more destructive?” It is clear that it is not at all clear whether it is better to win or loose, to be right or to be wrong, to get what we want or to be saddled with what we cannot stand. This leads Lao Tzu to ask, “Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course?” And, “Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?” And, to say, “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed herself from concepts, and keeps her mind open to what is.” Instead of railing against the way things are, we might simply have faith in the way things are, trusting that we are being led by That Which Knows along a curious and winding path straight to the heart of who we are, and into the service of what needs to be done— and, in so doing, fulfill our destiny and compete the work that is ours to do.
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02
For things to be better we all have to grow up. Growing up is the solution to all of our problems today. Every day. Growing up is sacrificing our good for the good of the whole. More than that-- Growing up is sacrificing our idea of the good for the good of the whole. Our idea of the good is the only thing standing in our way-- standing in the way-- keeping things from being better. For things to be better, we have to change our mind about what's important. Let me know when you are going to do that. I want to watch you leave what's important for what's important. It happens all of the time-- never willingly. Alcoholics give up what matters most for what matters most. But. Not of their own accord. Not because it is Tuesday morning and they feel like a change. People are always waking up and exchanging their idea of the good for the good. Not because they want to. Not because they are in the mood to do it. Not because they feel like doing it. Not because someone told them they should. But because they have no choice in the matter. It is forced on them by the weight of their circumstances. We have to get to the end of our rope before we can change our mind about what's important. The chances of all of us getting to the end of our rope at the same time are too faint to be calculated. So faint as to be nonexistent. Things need to be better, and we don't have what it takes to make them better. We need to grow up, and we don't have what it takes to grow up. Except that we do. But we can't access it until we have to. AA says, "Attraction, not promotion," because it knows until the student is ready, the teacher is wasting their time. We are not in control of the things required for things to be more like they ought to be than they are around the table, across the board. The one thing we can do, is sit quietly until we realize that and allow realization to work its magic. Knowing it and realizing it are different things.
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It is amazing how bad it can get just by moving away from the center and imposing our will for the good upon the situation-- any situation-- at whatever price, no matter what. When it is "Our way at all costs, and you can go to hell!" We all go to hell. There are always hidden costs we do not take into account when we say, "At all costs!" This is why greed and folly are always connected. Greed is folly! And when it is our way no matter what, that is merely greed dressed up in the finest motives, taking the moral high ground straight to hell and taking everyone with it. Beware of those who know best and must be pleased, particularly when they look back at you from the mirror. Seek the center. Live from there. Bear the pain of integrating the extremes. Balance and harmony serve the greatest good of all concerned with everything taken into account. Every parent worthy of the title understands this and incorporates it daily in their work to make things work.
September 21, 2020
02
I am sure you have noticed by now that everything we want comes with something we don't want attached. There is no escaping it, no denying it, which leaves us with accepting it, and letting it be because it is. There is nothing wrong anywhere in our life that growing up some more again won't make better. Growing up some more again in this instance means being able to say a wholehearted "YES!" to what we want, AND to what we don't want! "HELL YES!" To it all-- just as it comes right out of the box. There is not a scalpel anywhere so sharp as to allow us to cut out the good and throw away the bad. The good and the bad come to us as one thing. We give up this to get that. What is good for the lion is bad for the antelope, and can be bad for the lion if the antelope is sick, or staked out by hunters hiding in the bush. YES! to it all! Fran Tarkenton, the NFL quarterback known for his scrambling ability, was talking about his career on an ESPN interview. "I loved it all so much," he said. "The scrambling around and finding somebody open for long gains and touchdowns. And getting tackled for huge losses. The completions and the incompletions. The fumbles, and the mud, and the grime. The penalties, and the missed field goals, and points after touchdowns. The wins and the losses and every single aspect of the game. I miss it so." That is saying YES! to it all! Love your life the way Fran Tarkenton loved football! All of it! Every bit of it! It is passing so fast! And when it is gone, it's gone!
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You don't want to be living your life with an agenda in hand and a schedule at the ready, with every day being another bout at implementation. This is not to be in accord with the Tao. People who think they know best-- particularly with regard to how their life ought to be (and yours) are highly medicated just to get through each day. Or the people who live with them are. People who are structured to the limit (If only there were a limit!), and bound to the task of imposing their idea of how things ought to be on everything and everybody, are a threat to the possibilities for life worldwide, and a danger to themselves and others. Maintain a safe, healthy, distance between you and them, and by all means, do not marry one! And if you are one, take yourself out of circulation immediately! Trust the world to find its way without you, and trust yourself to find within what it takes to meet the disappointments of each day without issuing orders, writing pink slips, threatening law suits, or calling up plagues, droughts, earthquakes and floods. When given an opportunity, life generally, and our lives in particular, are quite capable of finding the way winding through all situations and circumstances to equilibrium and harmony, balance and peaceful accord. They do not flourish under the burdens of schedules and expectations, time frames and stop watches. But do best with their own rhythms and purposes, timing and patterns. The stream finds the sea, in its own time, in its own way.
September 20, 2020
04
The fulcrum--the pivot point--from past to future is to live with nothing at stake in the outcome. Giving our best to the moment with nothing to gain and nothing to lose, intent only on honoring the situation as it unfolds around us by responding to what is called for with the gifts we have to offer to each here and now, and letting what happens just be what happens to create the next moment in which we respond to what is called for with the gifts we have to offer... So that our life unfolds situation-by-situation, with us getting better at being who we are offering what we have to give to each time and place of our living, with nothing ever to gain, and nothing ever to lose, but always with another moment to shine and show our stuff by being who we are to the best of our ability just for the hell of it, day in and day out. What a life this is!
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03
I transplanted an Oak Leaf Hydrangea and a Pink Hydrangea, and planted a Southern Wood Fern this morning, and Jesus couldn't have done it better. Jesus and I are one in that regard. When Jesus said, "The Father and I are one," he was saying, "The Father couldn't do it better than I'm doing it." We do a lot of things as well as Jesus and the Father could do them-- and that's the idea with all that we do. The only thing standing in our way is us. We get in our way when we allow our preferences and opinions to interfere with our judgment about what needs to be done and how to do it. When we are on the beam, in the flow, at one with the Tao, centered on the path and in tune with the moment and what needs to happen there, no one could do it better than we are doing it. Jesus is a symbol for being conscious of what is called for in each situation as it arises, and for stepping forward to meet the situation with exactly what is appropriate for the occasion, in all times and places of our living. When we are on, nobody could do us better than we are doing us. We just need to be better at getting out of the way.
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02
Can you take "No" for an answer? It comes down to that. When is the last time you took "No" for an answer? How often have you taken "No" for an answer? Hold that thought, and consider this: Here's the way Howard Thurman said it: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” It can't be said better. It's what those who know have been saying since the first one knew. It's what people have been waking up to for as long as people have been waking up. Life. Living. Being Alive. That's it. Where is life found? What does it take to be alive? Where does your heart tell you "This is IT?" You have to spend more time there, doing that. The future of the world depends on it. And within that frame work of you doing what brings you to life, you have to know what you are going to say "No" to and what you are going to say "Yes" to-- and when you are going to take "No" for an answer, and when you are not going to be stopped, or moved away from your own truth, by anything in the world or beyond it.
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01
James Joyce said, "Any object,
intensely regarded, may be a gate
of access to the incorruptible
eon of the gods." (Buck Mulligan, Ulysses)
Joseph Campbell said, "Take, for example,
a pencil, ashtray, anything,
and holding it before you in both hands,
regard it for a while.
Forgetting its use and name,
yet continuing to regard it,
ask yourself seriously,
'What is it'
('What is it good for?
What is its purpose?
Why is it here?'
What was it before it became what it is?')...
Cut off from use,
relieved of nomenclature,
its dimension of wonder opens;
for the mystery of the being of that thing
is identical with the mystery
of the being of the universe--
and of yourself."
(A Joseph Campbell Companion).
It is a simple meditative exercise
that takes you to the heart of the matter
"as straight as a Martin to its gourd."
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 