The Precipice

We have nothing to lose and only more of the same to gain. We cannot regret or re-trace yesterday and make it work for today.

Eckhart Tolle’s little purple silent book ‘Stillness Speaks’ says, “We humans cannot regret the life we did not lead.”

Paul and I had to silence the two teenagers of our youth’s memory because they kept messing up our today with their eighteen year old brains resident in our sixty-two year old bodies.  Sometimes I wish our path that we are on now was an easier walk. It isn’t. When everything we envision is out of sight great, it appears that the next day or a day shortly there after we fight over daily short comings. The two selfish idealistic teenagers resurrect themselves daily, stand before us and in us cluttering up our minds and our lives with thoughts of could-a done, could-a been. Separately, we hurt for a while, go to the private corners in our self serving minds and lick our wounds. Later we confess our fragile love to and for each other once again moving on toward new understanding of us and our path.  This moment, this instant, is all any of us has.  What we find in our hands can all disappear in the very next instant: The people on the bridge in St Paul, Minnesota; The 9-11 airplanes and Trade Towers; A simple car wreck or a heart attack; A fall in the shower; Suddening bankrupt, experiencing homeless poverty.The Instant Theory lets go of what might have been. There will be no re-making the past or re-directing the future. Remember the old song:  “Why don’t we get drunk and screw?” I do not want that life for anyone.  I do not want anyone following The Red Balloon of illusion born of discontent. Drawing to the close of my sixth decade, I adopted this crazy prayer: “I am grateful. I have no complaints.”  I mumble that prayer to myself or to the Wherever, Whomever, Whatever Gods might be out there. That sentence has become my only prayer. I do not know when in this process, but at some point I began to see, truly see, my brothers and sisters on this paper-mâché piñata planet where we all spend our life’s walk. One good below the belt hit from out of no-where and every plan we ever had falls to the ground.  Someone or something or some circumstance is always lurking in the dark corner of our mind to smack our piñata. Our very solar system fears a rogue asteroid slamming us up-side our equator. My short simple constant prayer fills up my mind so that I do not stir the rancid stew of my former life using the spoon of should-a, would-a, could-a. The movie ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ directs that “We humans do not change until we are on the precipice of the point of no return.” That is the maxim for the planet and all its inhabitants. So dance along holding the string of The Red Balloon dreaming your way to the precipice. “We humans do not change or think about changing until we are on the precipice.”

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Look On The Bright Side

Just a note here on insight and awareness followed by the inevitable attitude adjustment.

Seeing an event or person through their eyes and attempting to understand begins insight and awareness.  Once seen; once understood; once aware; the viewer becomes subject to one more life changing event.

The viewer must at this point make a decision just how much he/she is willing to adjust to the new attitude.

This is the bottom line of every peace treaty, every court settlement, every barter deal,  every job or neighborhood disagreement, and every contract containing overlooked stipulations and unwritten hidden clauses.

These are situations that create and sustain mayhem in the human agenda.

I have written before and now again; ‘come let us reason together’ is a crippled sentence at a broken peace table.

Going over your own internal rebuttle while the other is still presenting his/her case is your way of not listening.

Mostly, human beings do not listen.  We humans talk a lot about any subject that comes up.  But we do not truly listen.  We do not come to a place where we painfully seek to understand the other’s treatise.

Think about this and try to put in place some purposeful listening techniques.  The big one is simply look at the person talking and command your own internal presence to hear, see and feel what is being said.

This is a beginning.  There are more techniques, but purposeful listening is the big one.  Good Luck !!!

How do I know this?  I am married: the oldest partnership on the planet.

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Alive Again

Columbus Day of 2000 became a Magic Day.

Waking up and staying in the conscious dream of glorious obsession that calls to be renewed moment by moment requires persistent diligence; or the dream will float away.  The vision is quickly lost in the Sea of Mundane.

Remembering to lift with purpose the lowered eyes of depression and gaze skyward to gratefully view the clouds, stars, moon, sun, eagles, hawks, a red crowned finch, rain, wind and the blowing leaves of an autumn day in October.

Listen to the wings of a hundred geese flying in formation.  Listen to their call, one to the other.  They speak and know you are watching.  Together we are both from the same dirt, yet formed in the likeness of our same selves.

The Great Bald Eagle flies across the sun and skims his shadow across the earth.

Fix your eyes upon him; turn your face into the cool north wind; take a deep breath lift your arms and fly.

All the chains of possession that bind the body to one place on the earth will be broken.  You will  own the sky; forsaking the plot of ground where you have firmly planted your feet into the quicksand of pride in ownership.

Loose your own chains.  Take possession of your obsession. There are no locks nor keys; for you have simply draped the links of bondage around your feet.

Fly Pilgrim.

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Wild Mustang Stew

Thinking sanely, making a way through the chitta of continual internal chatter is the most difficult of all disciplines.  There is no mantra that can call into being The Silence; for the silence itself, once perceived becomes only more chatter about how silent the silence is.  Don’t laugh, this is true.  The mental pot of steaming stew boils continually with unrelated thoughts.

The search for Peace and Solitude resides on the bedlam of our ever thinking brains.

Constant thoughts that file through the mind might resemble a pot of boiling vegetable soup.  Sometimes the carrots are on top; sometimes the beans rise to the surface followed by potatoes and celery, onions and garlic.

All the vegetables are in the same pot, on the same stove.  I am the pot.  I am the spoon stirring this forever boiling cauldron of Wild Mustang Stew.

How do I meticulously strain out the corn and keep the beans?

How do I continually adjust the heat and stir down the foam?

The human brain boils over constantly with thought; forever rotating the vegetables.

Simmering is not an option.  Simmering is the goal.

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