The Third Way To Truth

Ethics and inner values without religious content [a spiritual practice and teaching] are like water, something we need everyday for health and survival.  Ethics and inner values based on a religious context are more like tea.  The tea we drink is mostly composed of water, but it also contains some other ingredients-tea leaves, spices, perhaps some sugar or, at least in Tibet, salt-and this makes it more nutritious and sustaining and something we want everyday.
-Dalai Lama (Desktop Calendar, Andrews McMeel, 2018)


We are all going to reach the truth eventually about what is really important and who we really are.  That's a given.  There are three ways we reach this truth, according to Eckhart Tolle (Omega 2).  We can  become "enlightened" :

• at the moment of our death
• after enough intense suffering to create a hole in our sense of little self
• and through spiritual teachings and /or practice when we are ready.

Death will take us to  the Truth:

Of course, the first one is the hard way.  But most of us will go through life in a bubble of ignorance or denial, thinking we "know" that which we do not know.  We will have this idea of who we are which usually entails our body, the personality by which we are known by others, our active minds, the roles we played, the things we did or owned etc etc.  When we breathe that last breath, however, all those things are not going to matter a lick are they? We are not going to take them with us are we?  The truth is definitely going to shine on us then as we meet head on the Grace of God. We will be enlightened then.  :)


Suffering  can take us to the Truth:

The second way is also a hard way.  We can suffer.  We can live in a mental experience that the world is bad and out to get us.  We can spend our days in our heads supporting this belief by collecting grievances, complaining, building an argument against the now and in turn against life, we can blame and point fingers and we can suffer such great unrelenting pain as we realize that no matter how hard we try to fix and control things out there we still feel like crap!

We can go through our lives like this until we get to the first way of being enlightened....or.... we can finally crack and break open from the suffering long before our time here is up.  Such intense suffering can actually be the door way to the truth without us having to die first.  When who we thought we were falls to pieces around us, we can see who we truly are.  When the things we sought after are taken away, lost or never found...we can see that they were never important in the sense that they never had the power to bring us to the peace we actually longed for. Suffering can turn us toward the only place healing can be found...the mind, the inner self. Suffering then can be beautiful...a portal to the very thing death takes us to...God.

Teachings can take us to the Truth

The third way is actually the best and easiest way but few of us will take this path to enlightenment until we are faced with death or extreme suffering. There are teachers and teachings all around us speaking of this Grace and where to find it but we too often shut them out.  Our ego's do not want us listening to them because they have another agenda.  And we, without enlightenment of any kind , cannot see that we are not our egos.  We become what they tell us we are, not what God reminds us we are, when we are ready to listen. So all this spiritual stuff may become  just a bunch of "woo-woo nonsense" because it doesn't support ego's path for us....which points us 'out there' instead of 'in here'. We cannot learn what is there to learn until we are ready.  Too many of us are just not ready. If we do not learn at least some of the basics we will not see a spiritual practice as important to our understanding of life and Self.

By the Grace of God

Luckily, according to Tolle, the Grace of God is going to step in in one way or another to help us learn what we are here to learn. (Omega 2). This little self that keeps us from truly understanding the greater Self has a self destruct mechanism in it. It is going to eventually dissolve in one big Kaboom at the moment of our death or piece by piece throughout our days  through what we call suffering from life events.

When cracks in this false self appear, Grace shines through leading us to truth of what is really important.  Why?  Because we are ready.  We need to be ready and willing to learn.  We can begin on the path to  enlightenment then. What those teachers  and teachings are expressing starts to make sense...and not necessarily to the mind...but to  the greater Self that runs the show that makes its appearance more and more frequently.  We see where they are pointing to and we go inward for further understanding.  If we are lucky, suffering will be replaced by the peace of this understanding, long before our time here is up.

Well that is what I get from all this.  But it really is not important what I believe...you need to start questioning what you believe and why? Don't you think?

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle (March, 2017) Omega, 2. Namaste Publishing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37b6-C2QUdg

Suffering can be beautiful

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of  mind.
-Aristotle (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/suffering-quotes)

Suffering appears to be such a big nasty word doesn't it?  Pointing to something dramatic and dreadful, something we may never escape. It implies that there is deep, unrelenting pain of one kind or another inflicting our human experience.


Suffering is just a word

It is, however, just a  word ...and like all words, it is just pointing to a mental definition of experience and not to the experience itself. Suffering, then, as the Buddhists have taught for centuries, is an inevitable experience for all humans until they realize what causes it and follow the path away from it. It is a mental journey to suffering and a mental journey from suffering.

We All Suffer

Truth is, we all suffer in one degree or another, if we are defining our lives but what our minds are telling us. Life is going to give us what it gives us and regardless if that something appears big and worthy of the term suffering or not, it may lead to a fair degree of mental anguish for you. 

One person, for example,  may lose their ability to work in a job they love and find themselves suddenly without a regular source of income on which to support their dependents.  They may lapse into a mental resistance, "Oh My God!  This should not be happening!  Life is so unfair!  How could they do this to me? Why am I being punished?  Oh my God...what will happen in the future? How will I support my children? We are all going to end up homeless.  This is the last straw.  I can't take anymore."

Another person with the same situation might fall into the mental response of, "Oh that is too bad but it is what it is.  I will enjoy this break from work to figure out what I really want from life.  This is probably a good thing for all. The kids and I  will cut back on "things" and enjoy what is really important until I find another source of income."

Both individuals are faced with the same situation but only one is suffering. Why is that?

In the Mind

The mind loves suffering.  It is its thing and if we allow it to it can carry us off, convincing us that it is the life event, the health issue, the loss, the other person that is "inflicting" suffering on us. It will drag us into fears for the future and a drastic need to alter upcoming events. It will also pull us back into the past to ensure we stay stuck. We can quickly get lost in this quest or this "stuckness" but it is only in the mind that we are.  The loss of work did not cause the suffering...our mental reaction did.  Do you see that?

Even in the one individual mind suffering comes and goes.  My initial experience, for example, of being unable to work was at first reacted to with a great deal of mental resistance and fear which led to a great deal of suffering.  It was not the giving up of the job I loved, the extreme financial hardship it put me in and the lack of support I perceived I needed that was the problem.  It was my reaction to it.  I resisted, and struggled against it.  I fought it and it exhausted me.

Stop Resisting What Is

When I got to the point of realizing how my struggling against this life situation was impacting my life in a negative way, even though I could not change the outward situation, I began to change my inner one.  I stopped resisting and struggling against what Life was giving me.  I settled into it and found the blessing in that.  I mean I still did some things .  I spoke out and took action where I deemed necessary but it was a peaceful calculated action and not one where I was flailing about striking out at anyone I thought was responsible, no longer  putting all my energy into blaming and pointing fingers, into attempting to control and fix the situation. I stopped building a victim's story around it...stopped starring in a drama I was constantly creating.  I stepped back from what my mind was trying to convince me was going on...and I realized I did not have to follow it into suffering. I started thinking in terms of the second example above.

"I can't take anymore!"= Grace

I began to apply this practice to all avenues of my life. What suffering, all the forms of Dukkha I experienced in my mind over all the decades of my Life, gave me...was an opening to experience what was really important. My life situations took me to the place of "I can't take anymore." and that led me to the Grace that was waiting for me.  Grace broke down this heavy little shell of illusion...one that told me that I was this separate little body that was failing and this role I played for years in terms of a job title; one that convinced me I needed so much money and so many things in order to be okay and it  took me to the true solutions for all Life's issues...to a spiritual understanding rather than a mental one. My sense of suffering led to a path of true healing.  I find myself very, very grateful for all of it now.

I got to the point of my experience where I was ready to hear the wisdom all around me that came in spiritual teachings.  That teaching began to make sense and it pointed to even greater learning that existed within me. 

There will be more challenges up ahead.  There is no doubt about that.  That's okay.  And I may not always respond to life events with this peaceful reaction.  The momentum of the mind, after all ,  still has a tendency to pull me with it from time to time.  I am, however, very aware of that tendency and I can usually gently coax my way back away from its pull.  That in itself is an amazing feat!   I truly am healing.

Applying This Learning

If you too are sick of suffering, just notice how you are reacting to the life events you encounter.  Understand that it is not the life event...and I don't care how big it seems...but how you mentally respond that will determine whether or not you will suffer. Just by noticing, you are stepping away from the mind's pull to suffering.  You can then choose a different approach.  Choose to own your reaction and change your thinking.  Stop resisting what Life gives you, embrace it, learn from it and grow from it.  See it as an opening into greater wisdom and the greater you.

Suffering can actually be a blessed opening into the higher Self.

All is well.

The Heaviness of "me"

The human condition is not personal...it is just the human condition.
-Eckhart Tolle

Carrying the Heavy "me"

We all carry around this personal sense of self throughout our lives, don't we?  I know I do.  And it is heavy and painful to carry it around.  It distorts the way we see the world and, as is often my case with it, it makes it seem that others or the world is out to get us with one "thing" after another. We feel that our "happiness" ( a concept created, I believe, by this little "me",) is always being threatened or taken from us by the things around us. So we are always on guard, ready to attack for this idea of happiness and this idea of self. 

The Collective Experience of "me"

Sometimes we find reprieve by joining with other little personalized selves to form a collective, a tribe  or a nation and we stand together defending against and  attacking all the other 'selves' out there that do not ascribe to our ideology.  We are constantly making separations with the intention of protecting this "me".

What is this heavy "me"?

What is this heavy "me'' we are protecting? 

It is simply a concept, an idea we have, a thought...something that exists only in our minds.  It is an illusion and not who we really are.  It will definitely not last forever.  It may last for a life time but I guarantee that at the moment of our death we will realize just how illusionary it is and how we wasted so much precious life energy carrying it around because we mistakenly thought it was us.

This little personalized sense of self will self destruct at some point.  As Eckhart Tolle puts it, There is a self destructive mechanism  built into the illusionary self by the grace of God. (Omega 3). It will not last forever but unfortunately many of us are so identified with it , it may take time to dissolve. We just need to allow it to dissolve as it is programed to do.  Something greater beneath it is always pushing through. Trust that something.  Life knows what it is doing.

Allow it to crack open

Some of us are blessed enough to catch glimpses of just how flimsy this "little me" is before our deaths. We come to see how it is responsible for our suffering and how we really don't need it...in fact we would be better off without it.  This realization may come because of a feeling of intense suffering as a result of some tough life challenges.  Maybe we will reach a point where we say "This is just too much!" and a crack will appear in this armour of little self we wear. That crack allows grace to slip through and grace is the realization that we are merely caught in an illusion and need not be.  Others might say we are "breaking down" or "going crazy" but we will begin to feel a strength with this grace that we never experienced before, a lightening of a load, a freedom from the heaviness.  The world will begin to look very differently.  We will know that we are not going crazy, we are finally seeing clearly.

(Check out the poem that came to in the October 28th entry)

Beyond "me"

We will begin to see beyond "me" to all.  As we open up to Grace, we open to compassion and the ultimate human experience...Love.  And not just love for a few select people who share our genes or our homes and neighborhoods...but for all! We see the One family Dalai Lama spoke of in yesterday's entry.


So opening up, having this heavy  sense of "me" dissolve around us is not only freeing for us personally, it serves the world.  It serves humanity! It is essential.

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle (March 2016) Omega 3 2001-Grace Came in and Presence Emerged. Namaste Publishing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld2YRg23vkY

Loving Kindness/One Family

You have the opportunity to build a more peaceful century.  When you face conflict, you need to resolve it through dialogue and compromise.  To do this you need to respect others' rights, views, and humanity, considering them as brothers and sisters.  You need to think of humanity as one family.
Dalai Lama ( Desk top Calendar; Andrews McMeel; 2018)

Hmmm!  Thinking of Metta kindness today. Yes...even before I came across this quote from yesterday lol. There is that cool synchronicity again at play!

Metta and Loving Kindness

Though the word Metta is a Pali term and this practice is essential to Buddhist belief, it was taught by many great teachers including Christ.  In Saint Francis Assissi's famous poem , he prays "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace...where there is hatred let me sow love..." etc etc (https://grow.ourcatholicradio.org/st-francis-prayer?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIs7i059Cr5gIVGMZkCh3KCw78EAAYAiAAEgIkR_D_BwE)

Metta or Loving Kindness is a training practice that can be learned by anyone regardless of religious belief or cultural conditioning. That means one can not excuse themselves by saying, "Well I am just not the warm and mushy type "or "I am not a Buddhist and I don't believe in that stuff."   


A Training Practice

Anyone can learn it and not only that...it is imperative that we must learn it if humanity is going to survive.  It is a "practice" requiring a willingness and commitment to master it.  
It is a training  that will require many steps, many trials, many less than successful endeavors and that is okay. We simply  start where we are.

Steven Schwartzberg in his Huff post article, The Two Tiers of Loving-Kindness Practice, explains two steps that the practice involves.  First of all we must be willing to "try it on".  We become willing to experiment with it to see what kind of changes it will make in us and in others.  We might begin by practicing this with loving thoughts for those we love during our meditation practice.  We open our hearts in this way.  We may then practice it in our service to humanity by "giving" ourselves to the ones we love and to those who are easy to love.  The old axiom, "charity begins at home" may apply here.

But...again you knew there was going to be a but right?

We cannot leave it here.  We do not stop at what A Course in Miracles calls the special relationship. We don't stop at those people who we deem as special and close to us.  We need to expand beyond our in groups and apply it to the out group (Tolle, 2013) .  We must go beyond those who are easy to love because they somehow enrich our sense of personal and tribal self, those who are easy to love because they agree with our beliefs and opinions, those who make our life experience easier....to all.  We expand beyond our narrow version of family to see all of humanity as One  family. We practice offering loving-kindness to all unconditionally. Schwartsberg refers to this as the No matter what step. ( 2017 )

Not Always Easy

Of course, this is not an easy thing to master.  We are so conditioned in this idea that we are separate and must protect our sense of me, my and mine ( which may include the people who we consider special) at all costs against the "thems" of the world.  We spend a great deal of our mental energy both individually and collectively making lines in the sand between us and them. We spend a great deal of our resources making others into enemies in order to maintain this sense of individualized or nationalized self. Eckhart Tolle explains in the video, Conversations on Compassion with Eckhart Tolle (February 2013): The egoic self loves its enemies ; the personal self loves its problems.

It will, therefore, take some devoted training and practice to undo our need for problematic enemies and separation so we can expand our loving kindness to all. Recognizing humanity as one family may be a wonderful place to start.

Hmmm!  That is just my thoughts for the day,

All is well.



ACIM

Eckhart Tolle (Feb 2103) Conversations on compassion with Eckhart Tolle. CCare at Stanford.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M00VLswZdyc

Steven Schwartzberg (December, 2017) The Two Tiers of Loving Kindness. Huff Post. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-two-tiers-of-buddhist_b_9488502

Covenant Network/Catholic Radio.  Prayer of Saint Francis  https://grow.ourcatholicradio.org/st-francis-prayer?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIs7i059Cr5gIVGMZkCh3KCw78EAAYAiAAEgIkR_D_BwE

Waiting and Patience

Our patience will achieve more than our force.
-Edmund Burke (https://www.brainyquote.com/lists/topics/top-10-patience-quotes) 

Waiting

I am waiting on one more test...one that was going to be ordered to be done "now" and I am really not sure what this surgeon's interpretation of "now" is. Now to me means "same day" but to others it might mean in the next couple of weeks.  Sigh! I want closure...I want to put this aside once and for all.  I want someone to tell me what this mass is...a mass that is not showing up conclusively on the ultra sound and that I doubt if some even feel.  I wasn't worried about it...because my intent all along was to give it 30 days after the infection to see if it was still there.  I knew I probably had it assessed too early and that may have led to an exaggeration of it.(Felt larger because of the inflammation).   That is why I was going to give it 30 days.


Worried

Once the inflammation began to go it appeared and felt  differently but now I sadly know...it is still there.  There is something there beyond the tiny cyst the ultrasound is picking up.  It might be no more than scar tissue from ductal atresia.  That's great...I just want to hear someone say that "It is definitely just scar tissue and  nothing to worry about." And I am also getting some discomfort in the area lately that I didn't have before...I want someone to tell me..."It is just menopausal  hormonal fluctuations causing the discomfort.  All just coincidence. "  Great...I would walk away and never think of it again. But  I have a hard time pushing this aside now without definite closure.  My mind wants and demands closure.  I don't find peace with "Probably nothing. " Sigh

Resisting What Is

But again...this is all just  resistance to what is.  What is...is this presumption that it is probably nothing.  What is...is this abnormal mass that may or may not be nothing.  What is...is the circumstances that led me to this point of pondering:  my family history, my personal history, the infection, my feeling the mass, my GP feeling the mass, the cyst that shows up on ultrasound( which seems to be what others stop at and which by the way I never felt), other differentiated opinion(some concerned, some aren't), what shows up or doesn't show up on examination and testing.  So many circumstantial things come into play.  This is what is in the foreground of my life.

The Problem is the Mind

Ugh!  But the most important factor that brought me here to this point of frustration and worry is my mind...what my mind is doing with this "stuff".    It is clinging...trying to analyze, problem solve, fix in the way it is used to doing. It is trying to put puzzle pieces together without all the pieces on the table so it creates a distorted image.  It infers and makes assumptions. It is chattering away with , "What if...", "It is all happening again.  You will never get a diagnosis..."  and, "you got to do something." It almost  wants to focus on this so it doesn't have to focus on other somewhat draining  things in my life. This "new drama" trumps all the other stressors my mind feels it has to deal with.  Wow!

My mind is the issue not the breast or the circumstances.  My mind is the problem.


Letting Go for Peace of Mind

I need to let go of this with or without definite validation from others.  I had the hardest time doing that with my other health issues and it nearly drove me over the deep end. I won't do that here.  I am aware of what is and I am also aware there is a lot I don't know.  That is okay.  In the physical sense, I have done my part.  I went and showed the mass to someone.  I went for the tests.  I went for the consults.  I must let go of the physical part of this to the professionals. This is not history repeating itself anywhere but in my mind. I can wait patiently.

Most importantly, I can let go to a higher power.  I can let go to God. This isn't about "me'' anyway.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.  Whatever is or isn't manifesting in my body is just Life doing Life.  I give this up to that which will handle it with ease....that to which it belongs.  I trust that Life knows what it is doing and it will do so with or without my consent.  I might as well consent. I do not have to do anything else until I am inspired to do something.  For now, it is all good.

Wow!  I find so much peace in that.

All is well.

Blocked

There is no rule on how it is to write...Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly.  Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
-Earnest Hemingway ( https://www.suttermedia.net/5-quotes-from-ernest-hemingway-may-help-writers-block/)


Fifteen years ago, around this time I received a call that my sister was gone.  Fifteen years have passed.  Hmmm! 

I have had her story open in My documents for weeks now and I have such a hard time getting to it, for some reason, always finding a reason not to go there.  All I have to write is 1000 words a day... I write more than that in my sleep lol...why can I not go to  this story and give it 1000 measly words a day?   I just get this pit in my stomach when I look at where I am at now...this big ball of blocked energy...a sign that healing is necessary.  Hmmm!  This story will be my healing and it will require my healing at the same time.  What does a person do with that? 

I want this story to be very well written for her sake as well as my own.  That holds me back too.

Ticker is actually acting up as I think of that...go figure.  I will somehow find my way through this rock and then I will blast the story out of me somehow.   I know I will feel tremendous  relief as a result.

It is all good.

Relief

Relief

Remove  just one shackle that keeps you chained

to this old way of thinking;

take one brick away  from the load

you  carry on your back;

pour  one drop of truth's elixir between

your parched and blistered lips;

apply cooling ointment to one wound

that oozes and throbs from the captor's whip;

give yourself  one moment to sit and rest 

your weary bones and hurting feet;

allow yourself  just one breath of freedom

from the torment your mind inflicts...

so mercilessly....

....and you will experience Relief.

 

Relief is not something I or the world can offer you.

It is something you must give yourself....

for you are both the captive

and the captor

in your story of Dukkha. 

 

Be kind...

remove yourself from this suffering....

with one bout of relief at a time.

Set yourself free....

and all will follow.

 

Dale-Lyn December 2019

 

 

Hmmm!  Had another one of those, "Oh you gotta get up!"  moments last night.  I didn't get up (I am just so tired these days lol). I had one word circulating through my mind all night and I cannot even remember what that word was...but this morning, this came to me.  Whether or not it is related to what was going on in my head last night, I will never know :). It really doesn't matter.

All is well!

Joy

Joy is the reward, really, of seeking to give joy to others.
- You know who ( desk top calendar...Andrew's McMeel, 2018)

The Art of Mind Training

The training of the mind is an art.  If this can be considered as art, one's life is an art.
-Dalai Lama (desktop calendar; Andrews McMeel Publishing; 2018)

There was something very profound that I wanted to write about.  It came to me in a dream and once again I said, "Ahhh...not getting up. Too tired.  I will remember it when I do get up in the morning."  Well I didn't remember it lol. 

When am I going to learn to get up when these things come to me?  Imagine if Milton didn't get up when "Paradise Lost" came to him...we would be without one of the greatest epic poems of history.  :)

Not that I have such an inspiration for classic pieces of literature rumbling through my dreaming mind in the middle of the night lol...but there is something I know I need to be tapping into. Maybe it is nothing more than a jingle for a dog food commercial...but something is telling me I need to get up and write it down.  :)

Don't go back to sleep.-Rumi

Anyway...ticker is acting up a bit , possibly related to the "stress" my mind convinced me I should be experiencing due to the recent circumstances.  Brady enough to make me nauseated, chesty and weak...but atlas...have been here many, many times before and I will come around.  Just glad I am not teaching a yoga class today. I may have given new meaning to downward facing dog.  ( I have a tendency to faint when I feel like this). It is all good...it really is.

What was the major point of my inspiration last night?  I know it fell along the same lines I have been writing about.  You know... all the usual?  That so called "happiness" is not found outside, it is found inside.  That all there is to live is now.  That we are so much more than our bodies, minds, circumstances. That we extend way beyond this idea of "little me" we fight so hard to defend and maintain. Hmm!  I guess, it relates to today's quote from the calendar, to the art of training the mind to see and understand these truths.

The last couple of weeks were an amazing learning opportunity for mind training, for creating my own form of epic poetry throughout my day. I am grateful for this Life art.

Hmmm!

All is well.

The Unseen Blessings of the Mind

A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
-Thomas Carlyle

So, so tired this morning.  My day turned out much better yesterday than I expected. Well I really wasn't placing expectations on it anyway and because of that lack of attachment to outcome,  I walked away relieved but not thrilled or over-joyed.  The thing is...it didn't impact me that much other than offering a bit of relief of the worry I carried (though I kept saying I wasn't carrying it lol).  I really was ready to accept whatever...wasn't going to be blown away by bad news nor would I be jumping up and down with "good".  I was just going to accept!  Which, I have come to believe after years of doing things the hard way, is the healthiest way to approach Life.

Well, I did not get the life altering news I thought might have been possible to receive, which definitely provides a great deal of relief from an imminent threat.  But (I feel guilty putting a but in there :))...I didn't get the closure either.  More tests...I need to go for more darned tests. Ugh!!!! I am one of those people that do not like to be in between things.  Either tell me it is something so I can begin processing or tell me it is nothing so I can walk away and put it out of my mind forever.

But atlas...this is what we got and where we are. It really is no big deal!  If it were a big deal...that would have been put on the table yesterday.  That would have been obvious. So that is a blessing and the relief it brings now is also a blessing.

Though I didn't get ..."It's nothing...put it out of your mind...all done!" ...the outcome of yesterday's appointment could have been much worse.

I am so grateful for the care and attention the professionals ( especially my GP) devoted to this matter. I am even more grateful for the new way I can use this mind of mine with its unseen perfections and riches.

I am blessed.

Hope for Happiness??

I always say the purpose of life is to be happy.  There are no guarantees about the future, but we live in hope.
-Dalai Lama ( the calendar)

The Problem with the word Happiness

I am always cautious with the word happy.  It is just a word doing nothing but pointing a finger at something deeper but the word itself has always seemed too superficial to me for some reason.  Happiness seems to be an ego word, representing something conditional and gained by seeking outside the Self.   I prefer joy, peace, compassion, love....to happiness.  Just me, I guess,  and the way the word resonates inside me ( it doesn't lol).  Now I do use it, a lot,  knowing that others look at it differently.

So anyway...the purpose of life is to be happy ( i.e.  joyful, open, alive, peaceful, grateful,  enthusiastic, inspired, compassionate and loving). And if we are not feeling it now in this present moment we "hope" that we will reach that "happiness" in some moment up ahead. 

The future as we all know can not be predicted, controlled, fixed or guaranteed to go a certain way.  As long as we seek happiness in it and depend on everything in the future working out a certain way, the less likely we will actually find this idea of happiness.

But as the Dalai Lama says we live in hope of finding it someday. Hmmm!  Hope is another concept that trips me up.  (My bad for contradicting the Dalai Lama) .

The Problem with the Concept of Hope

Now it has its merits for sure. I much prefer the feeling of so called hope over the feeling of despair...big time.  It is a nice feeling to  hope...it pulls us from the depth of defeat and makes one a little taller and more energetic.  That's good. There is no doubt about that but hope again takes us away from the present moment to the future where we assume, project, and wait for this thing called happiness. It is still a future projection.  The hope we are looking for is usually  based on conditional outcomes, depending on  something to change in our external environments  to make us happy, is it not??

Does that not deny the truth that all we need to be happy is right here , right now regardless of what is going on around us or to us?

See...I have this conditioned notion right now that I need "hope" to get me through tomorrow and the upcoming days and weeks.  Most people, if they knew what I had going on, would say, "Be positive!  Don't give up hope. Things will work out!" I myself, would probably say that to someone having the same experience.

Yet, things may or may not have the outcome others would deem necessary for happiness. Yes, things may work out positively and that is great.  Everything may be just honky dory after tomorrow which will definitely make feeling peace a lot easier, let me tell ya.


But....

 At the same time I know, after all my seeking truth, that my peace does not have to  be dependent on what happens tomorrow.  My waiting for a positive outcome tomorrow is not going to allow peace ( my version of happiness) to flow through me right now.  Let me rephrase that...it is not going to connect me to the feeling of peace that is flowing through me right now.

Does that make sense?

Hope is a higher energy frequency than defeat is.  (Don't get tripped up by that 'energy' word...you know how tired and listless you feel in defeat and despair...compared to the skip in your jump when you are optimistic and hopeful...right?  That's energy!)  You want that energy. But it is not "hope' that you need.

Just Don't Close!

You want the opening it provides. You do want that higher energy coursing through you and your Life.  You do want to feel grateful, in awe of Life, enthusiastic...what his holiness refers to as "happy". Our purpose is to keep that energy flowing in us and others. 

All I am saying is that we just need to tap into that feeling that is already in us, always will be in us...right here, right now!!! We don't wait until things turn out a certain way and hope for the best!!!  Regardless of any possible outcome we open up now to this feeling.  As long as we are not feeling it (whatever word you choose to use to describe it) ...we are simply closing up to what is there.  It has nothing to do with what is going on around us or to us.  We simply decide to be open ...which is translated  by most people as ...we decide to be happy unconditionally.  (Singer, 2007)

Hmmm!  I am willing to be happy (i.e. joyful, peaceful, grateful, open, alive, enthusiastic, compassionate, loving etc.) unconditionally regardless of what tomorrow's outcome is.  I don't need hope.  I just need to stop closing.

All is well.

Michael Singer ( 2007) the untethered soul. Oakland,CA: New Harbinger/NoeticBooks

Remembering

Beauty exists not in what is seen and remembered, but in what is felt and never forgotten.
Johnathan Jena (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/remembrance)

I am remembering and missing two people I loved and lost in the month of December.  There is my beautiful sister ( the one I am writing my latest book about) who died suddenly and unexpectedly in her sleep in 2004, at the age of 45.  And there is my Dad who lost his battle with cancer, dementia and heart failure in 2015.

I found this poem about my Dad. My sister wrote this shortly after he passed.   So I am going to publish it here and if by chance she is reading this ( I assume and hope she gave up on my "woo-woo nonsense" lol long ago), you may never hear from me again. She will kill me!!!

She is a brilliant writer, much better than me in many ways.   This poem captures my Dad to a tee...it is almost if I can reach out and grab the cap from his head when I read these words.

First, take the gleam

from the hood of a red truck

And then a small sliver of rust from its dent

along with the Virgin Mary, plastic and blue, from the dash...

Now add the smell from the inside of a ball cap

But only from one well worn – from someone who

worked long in the sun

who chewed tobacco because it was said

to be less deadly than smoking

But  just  in case

also take the  few remaining Player’s Light

 From the glove compartment because tobacco chewing

Is often as seasonal as two- tone arms

or very shy uncles

And take work boots – only Kodiaks will do

And trees on flat beds with their roots heavy and wet

and wrapped securely in burlap sacks

And don’t forget the garbage

On the passenger side floor—

especially the smell of fried onions from

the white paper box

Now take each of these

and place it upon the other

until you have the soft light of a summer evening

and your father pulling in the drive

 My sister, 2015

(I will leave her name out to protect her privacy [and my life]...but it is copyright protected.)

 

I also ran across a poem about my sister that I wrote after she passed, while I was still grieving.  Should have put it first because it  cannot compete with the one above. lol.  I will publish it here anyway, just to honor my sister.

 

Sometimes

Sometimes,

I feel you here

quietly sitting in a corner

leaning slightly onto

elbows resting on a bouncing knee.

You do not speak,

do not pass on your funny  stories

or your wisdom.

You don’t blow smoke rings

from  your MacDonald’s cigarette

over steamy cups of King Cole tea.

You don’t pull disobedient strands of long dark hair

behind your ears

the way you used to.

 

Nor do you cough in fits

 

or gasp to catch your breath

 

with each round of bubbly laughter

 

you release into the stale air

 

that I am, too often,

 

drowning in.

 

 

Yet...

 

Sometimes,

I sense you around me.

Hear an echo of that laughter

rumbling between these walls of solitude,

reaching way inside my heart

pulling out smiles

from places I thought were closed.

Faint traces of your perfume will

sometimes

override the odor of the morning’s bacon

that lingers on my drapes

and I will think of you.

You become a warm feeling … then

in the center of my chest.

That spark that once stirred in your cat green eyes

 will settle upon me

making the hairs on my arms dance in delight.

 

Sometimes,

I feel your sisterly arm around my shoulder.

Everything I didn’t say or didn’t do

is forgotten.

I feel peace

as your forgiveness wraps itself

around me in the rays of light

shining in from the  kitchen window. 

I feel your love and I know... 

I know…

 

it is all going to be Okay.

 

Me 2005

 

 

It is all so very good!