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1.29.2005
Saturday, January 29, 2005
From Richard Bach's "Illusions":
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."
"The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't."
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."
And my favorite:
"Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't."
Happy Saturday. Be good to yourself, OK? Don't let me catch you berating yourself for being a loser or anything or I'm going to have to come out there and buy you an ice cream cone.
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1.28.2005
Friday, January 28, 2005
When that punishing voice gets to screaming at you, remember that you have a choice. It is only a psychology that is desperate to survive, and it needs your willing consent to do so. This is why it screams. It is afraid you will see it for what it is - a hoax being played on your happiness. Because if you see that happiness and joy are possible, it believes it will die, so it screams at you and screams at you.
When it tells you that everything is dreary and bleak and that it always will be, remember that everything is just as it should be right now, and that it always will be just as it should be. When it tells you you're a loser, tell it that that is not possible, because God created you and such an idea is a defilement of God. When it tells you your ideas are stupid ask it how it could possibly know, being that all it ever does is criticize your ideas without trying any of its own. When it shows you images of your failure show it images of your resounding success. When it shows you images of an empty bank account show it images of a bank account that's brimming.
The voice is nothing more than an attack on possibility. It is telling you that your life is not possible. Tell it that it is, and that you have a right to exist, and that every dream you ever dreamed is definitely possible, and that you are capable of achieving them. Tell it that you are not the invalid it paints you out to be - that you are strong, that you have resilience, that even if you fall, you will get up again, and again, and again, and again, and that no failure will ever put you down for the count. That you will succeed. That you will fulfill the potential God has given you, because it is what you want and it is what God wants. Tell it that you have a hero inside of you, not a failure.
The bottom line is this - it is every bit as foolish to believe the voice, which has never accomplished a God-damned thing, as it is to believe in your dreams. Let me repeat that. It is as foolish to believe in the voice as it is to believe in your dreams. Why not then, believe in your dreams, and go after them, with everything you've got, no matter who says what and no matter what odds you need to overcome? This is the daring adventure of which Helen Keller spoke. Why be a fool for the voice? If you're going to be a fool, be a fool for your dreams. Eventually, your dreams will show you that you were no fool at all.
You must confront the voice, consciously and vigorously. There is no mystery to it, although it would have you believe it is mystery. You must battle with it. Blow for blow and word for word. It cannot win because it is not real. You are real. Your strength is real. Your potential is real. The only way the voice can win is if you never show up for the fight - if you give up before you ever get in the ring.
My partner reminded me a couple of days ago of this powerful aphorism: Stop telling God how big your storm is. Instead, tell your storm how big your God is.
Happy Friday. Go get 'em.
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1.27.2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Firts off, I saw Hotel Rwanada last night. It's a must-see. Sobering.
This picture is of the little revoir they used for the opening sequence in "The Andy Griffith Show" - the one that Andy and Opey walked past with their fishing poles while that little whistle song played. It's a little shy of the turn-around spot for long walks that a friend of mine and I take occasionally - usually about 8 miles - 3 hours or so - a nice long, soulful walk. I love long walks and fun, soulful, whatever-comes-to-mind talks. I used to love walking to school every day. I would go by my freind John Flaherty's house and knock on his door. Then we'd walk over to the corner where Doug Casey would be waiting for us, and sometimes Rollie Graham, and we'd all walk the mile and a half to school, sometimes in 5 degrees and sometimes in the beautiful crispness of fall or the short-sleeve warmth of spring. We'd laugh and joke. Sometimes we'd just be quiet. It was good for the soul - a kind of daily meditation. Buddha would have approved.
There was a pond we walked by every day. When I looked at it my imagination could see paddle boats going across it and a bandstand with ragtime music playing on Friday nights, and fireworks displays - a kind of little Disneyland. I actually made an appointment to see the mayor when I was 15 to go in and bring him my plan for turning the lonely pond into a magical gathering place for the town. He couldn't see it, poor thing.
I was a weird kid in that respect. I'm a weird adult in that respect too. I wouldn't change it for the world.
I still love to walk, and to think of the craziest, most outageous possibilities and dreams. I think they enjoy that I spend some time with them. They seem as lonely to me as that pond. One day we will have to bring them out to meet everyone.
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1.26.2005
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude..."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, 1841
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1.25.2005
January 25, 2005
For the most part, we're freaked out most of the time and we don't even realize it. We're worried that we're losers, that we might lose our job or our business and be left homeless, that something might happen to one of our children or to our parents. We're worried that we haven't accomplished enough and that time is running out. I know I do, and I know if I'm doing it, probably most everyone else is doing it too.
So, it's a good day for some Eckhart Tolle to get us back into today and out of the future and out of the past. Here are a few reminders and gems from "The Power of Now" to help us all through our day today:
"Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal." (Page 12)
"Thinking has become a disease." (Page 13)
"'One day I'll make it.' Is your goal taking up so much of your attention that you reduce the present moment to a means to an end? Is it taking the joy out of your doing? Are you waiting to start living? If you develop such a mind pattern, no matter what you achieve or get, the present will never be good enough; the future will always seem better. A perfect recipe for permanent dissatisfaction and non-fulfillment, don't you agree?" (Page 71)
"Why are you always anxious? Jesus asked his disciples, 'Can anxious thought add a single day to your life?' And the Buddha taught that the root of all suffering is to be found in our constant wanting and craving." (Page 63)
"You cannot be free in the future. Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now." (Page 51)
"The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. It comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap. And if you are identified with your mind and have lost touch with the power and simplicity of the Now, that anxiety gap will be your constant companion. You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection - you cannot cope with the future." (Page 35)
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1.23.2005
Monday, January 24, 2005
In a world that demands that we conform, we need all the encouragement we can get to be true to ourselves - to stand up for our own truths and our own dreams and hopes and visions, no matter how ridiculous they may seem to the herd or to all the learned "experts." I can think of no one better to provide that kind of support than Robert Frost. This is his famous poem, "The Road Not Taken":
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could.
To where it bent in the undergrowth,
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
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