The normal course of life is like this: A wart grows on your nose and becomes so big that you finally can’t hide it from yourself or others. So you pretend to be someone else. And people, for one reason or another, quit mentioning the wart. Of course, you can’t mention their crossed-eyes, crooked teeth, ugly toes, and etc.
We do not see the world for what it is, nor do we really see each other. (more…)
Everywhere I look abundance and every moment gratitude. There is nowhere to go and nothing needed.
One way I see our situation is that creation or the universe is like a tree. Love is the flowers of the tree, and the human being is the final fruit of the tree, the final fruit of creation. The thick nectar of the ripe fruit is gratitude. Gratitude for how things are, gratitude for being vulnerable, gratitude that you can be completely influenceable. Gratitude for being human. – A. H. Almaas
Appreciation floods my soul in recognizing the preciousness of the human experience.
As you may notice, the notion of oneness has quite an impact on your mind; it is a possibility that your mind doesn’t usually conceive of. The idea of it has an impact. Now, imagine what the experience is like. The more the person has an experience of oneness, the more the person will be walking around with a question mark: How can that be? What does that mean? You are eating your food, and you ask, “What am I eating? I am eating myself.” For your mind, it is completely incomprehensible. It takes time for the mind to get used to it, to adjust itself, to realize, “Yeah, I do not really have to think the way I usually think, I do not really have to go about my life the way I usually go about it. Things are not really like that.” The goodness and abundance is in every point and all of existence. It is not here or there. – A. H. Almaas
Everything’s been drug into the Wide-Open
He’s turned the whole house inside out
Even the walls are for sale
We were going to ask pennies on the dollar
But wanted better bargains
We’re asking for laughter instead
I put out all the images of my friends
Some art collector took the lot
Laughing – all the way to the bank
I gathered all my stories and tales
Hopes, woes and dreams
And rushed them out to the curb
Just in time to catch
An impoverished playwright
He was certain the joke was on us
I ran out of personal items
So I started bringing over
Donations from friends
Thinking I was pulling
A fast one on Him
I can’t contain the mirth
What a rip-roaring snort
When I discovered His face
In all of the Buyers and Sellers
What a riot!
I can’t tell you
Who is laughing loudest!
I remember when I stored 50 or 100 phone numbers between my ears. This was back in the day of the rotary phone. I should have realized that those 12 push buttons of technology from Ma Bell were going to lead me down the path of selective technological dementia – where I have to check a digital device for my name, rank and serial number.
As human beings, we rarely dwell on just how fragile our existence is. We tend to think the sun will rise tomorrow and though Bernie Madoff is in jail, our financial security is no more secure now than it has been at any other time in history. It can all go in the flicker of an eye – everything gone, even more so than the tsunami in Japan.
Likewise, we text, tweet and like as if all of our gadgets will be there for us – should the sun continue to rise.
A strong solar storm in 1859 shorted telegraph wires, causing fires in North America and Europe. If such an electromagnetic storm occurred today, it would take four to ten years to recover electric power lines, according to a report of the National Academy of Science. Given the strong interdependence of every system, the effects could be devastating for the whole of society. – The Digitally Divided Self
I wonder how many of us would survive if we lost electricity for a decade.
And on another note –
God!
You should hear
Me complain!
About this lack of sleep
You’d never know
I’ve just awakened
From a fifty-year snooze
Every time I try to relax
A new tale from beyond
Enters my head
Going on and on
Like a broken record
Until I let it out
Or, some soft kiss
Steals into my heart
Setting it on wing
This canary’s very nature
Is endless sweet song
There’s no time to rest
The grave is rushing toward us
Like a runaway train
Don’t be struck
Deaf, dumb and dead
Before your time
Choose your death wisely
Crack your heart-seed open
Now
Die in this moment
Singing your birth-song
And you
Into existence
Come join me
In this delicious misery
Lay your head upon
Soft feathered pillows
Awaken
In His lap
God
Wants to hear
You complain too!
Gently, I lower into my self
An elegant lady entering a bath
The pool of being welcomes
A tulip at day’s cool end
The mirror reverses
Awakened lucidity
Boundaries fade
Noon sun burning fog
No longer seeking
I am
A friend (point 8) commented to me once about “the bad rap eights get”. This was in response to an article on the enneagram of personality types that had appeared in a major metropolitan newspaper. The article quoted one person’s viewpoint that “eights are awful to be married to!” As an eight myself, I could relate to both my friend’s concern and the person quoted in the article because I too was married to an eight and it was the worst 18 months of my life!!! Those eights are they too much or what?
I have attended a number of enneagram functions and have many friends and acquaintances within enneagram circles. Invariably, I hear comments about how eights are the worst. In studying the enneagram, I learned that no particular fixation is better or worse than any other. Why then do we continue to hear comments like this? (more…)