Taking something on faith 
is having an opinion about something
with no facts or substantiating evidence
to support you
and believing in it anyway.

Faith is an opinion with no foundation
or validity.
And is the ground of all religion everywhere.

We have sacrificed animals,
children,
virgins,
limbs
and digits
based on the opinion
that the gods could be swayed
to do our will
by the pleasing odor
of burning flesh.

Opinions are the easiest things to produce
and the hardest things to squelch 
or be rid of.

At least that is my opinion,
and I take it on faith 
that it is so.

And you have an opinion
about my opinion
that you take on faith is so.

That is how opinions work.

If we were sufficiently motivated,
we could build a religion 
around our opinions.

That is how all religions come into being.
And a lot of people die
at the hands of all religions.

Human beings are a strange lot,
but that's another opinion.
There may be enough evidence 
backing it up
to make it a fact. 

–0–

We owe it to one another
to listen each other 
to the truth of our own being
here and now.

In order to assist you in doing that,
I've developed a list of questions
you can modify for use in your own conversations,
and ask your own follow-up questions
in order to take the conversation
in the direction of its natural direction and flow.

It is important to shift your conversations
away from the same old same old things
you always say--and are expected to say.

We go nowhere covering the same ground every day.

How's your balance and harmony?
What are the sources of destablization?
What do you do to restore your balance and harmony?
To maintain it?

What do you like to do best/enjoy doing most?
What makes your little heart sing
and your little toes dance?
How often do you do these things?
How long has it been since you have done them?

How often do you spend time in silence and solitude?
For how long each time?

Do you remember your dreams
and try to see what they might be saying 
about your life?

What is your original nature?
What is your specialty?
What are the things you are good at?
What would friends say you are good at?
What would they say are your qualities
that set you apart from others?

Where do you turn when you have nowhere to turn?
Where do you go for peace and consolation?
To get away from it all?
To recover from the past and store up for the future?

How do you come to terms
with things that are not the way
you want them to be?

How do you deal with the discrepancy
between the way things are 
and the way you want them to be?

Who do you talk to about the things that matter?

In what ways has the worst thing that ever happened to you
also been the best thing that ever happened to you?

In what ways has the best thing that ever happened to you
also been the best thing that ever happened to you?

How do your expectations and opinions get in your way?

How often do you try to will what cannot be willed?

Who do you know that has ever asked you any of these questions?

How many of these questions would it have been helpful
to be asked before now?

"Fair winds and following seas" with this assignment.

I'm glad to have made your day!

–0–

Be free to make mistakes
without being bound to them,
repeating them,
becoming them
to the point where your life
is just one continuing,
eternal mistake
in a Karmaratic,
indulgent,
helplessly incapable
of breaking out of the tradition
kind of way declaring,
"I'm nothing but a screw-up!
I've never been anything but a screw-up!
I'll always be a screw-up!",
glad to be relieved of the burden
of discerning what needs to be done
in a situation
and doing it.

Helping us to discern what needs to be done
in a situation 
and doing it
is what our mistakes are here
to do for us.

Our role is to become better
at knowing and doing what needs to be done,
one mistake at a time.

I hate that I made all the mistakes
I have made--
and recognize the place of each one
in enabling to be where I am today.

Mistakes are self-correcting
adjustment mechanisms
nudging us back onto the path
that can be recognized
only in hindsight,
situation by siutation
all our life long.

There is always something
about the last situation
that helps us improve 
our response to the next situation.

Recognizing that is 
what enlightenment is all about.

There is no steady state of being
called "Enlightened At Last!"

There is only seeing better 
what needs to be done
and doing it when/where/how 
it needs to be done,
one situation at a time.

It is all practice.
Performance is practice.
We are rehearsing
for the next scene
in this scene
forever.

Missing our cues
and forgetting our lines
are all a part of nailing our role
through scripts that change
unannounced,
instantaneously,
and scenes 
that are nothing like
we expected
all along the way.

–0–

We are told what to believe,
but no one can give us our opinions.
Of course, they try,
but to be genuine,
opinions have to come from within.

Belief from without,
opinions from within.
Articles of faith are opinions
that take themselves seriously.

And, when we don't know
what we think or believe,
it's great to be able to say,
"I don't know what to make of it,
of this, 
or that,
or that over there!"

When things make no sense,
there is no making sense of them,
"we let the mystery be"
(Iris Dement).

Having to explain everything,
or have it explained,
takes the mystery out of it,
and leaves us with what somebody said
that somebody said.

Better to befriend the mystery,
along with wonder
and awe,
and direct encounters
with radiance and the sublime.

+++

Jesus said, "You shall know the truth,
and the truth shall set you free."

Begging the questions,
"Free from what?"
"Free to do what?"

And Pilate's inquiry,
"What is truth?"
Which Jesus left hanging through 
all these long years of truthlessness.

Which will continue as long as we look
for truth "out there,"
when it is solely a function
of our own integrity,
of our living out the truth 
of our own humanity,
aligned with the truth of who we are
in all that we do,
exhibiting the truth of our original/essential nature,
and the truth of our innate virtues/traits/character,
in each situation as it arises
all our life long.

We know when we are living truthful lives,
and when we are not.

Jacob Bronowski said,
"You cannot know the truth
unless you live in certain ways."
He meant living truthfully.
With integrity,
at one with inner and outer,
doing/exhibiting/expressing who we are
in the way we live,
in each situation as it arises.

Our bodies know when we are not doing that.
Our lives know it.
But we have our supplements,
and our Fit-Bits.
We have nothing to worry about. 

–0–

I am taken by the flow of life
through the circumstances
and situations of each day--
and how so few people seem to be
aware of it.

My sister-in-law, for instance
(You know the one I mean),
sees every moment as an opportunity
to assert her way upon whatever 
is happening,
with no clue regarding 
how she might assist what is happening
toward its own purposes and goals.

The choice waits to be chosen
by all.
Few know, or care,
that a choice even is to be made.

In each moment of every situation
as it arises
there is the possibility 
of assisting the flow of the situation,
or diverting it,
or dismissing it altogether
and creating a disturbance
of varying degrees of seriousness
from mild to chaotic
to heaving madness beyond anyone's capacity
to redeem,
reclaim,
or salvage. 

Every situation is at the mercy
of those participating 
in its oversight,
stewardship,
management.

Which brings to mind the old saw,
"While it takes a minimum of two
to have a fight,
one person can keep a bad situation
from deteriorating completely 
into all out war
that is totally out of hand."

What this means for us
is the importance of sensing 
the movement,
the flow,
of each situation as it arises
(Or that we step into),
and making the conscious choice
to assist/maintain the momentum
of the moment toward an outcome
that is a natural extension of the here/now,
or stop the drift of the Tao
and redirect things to a different outcome,
regardless of the impact upon 
the situation as a whole. 

Our situations and circumstances
are all we ever have to work with.
We tilt things to better or worse
by the way we size things up
and respond to them
one situation/circumstance at a time.

–0–