Start Where You Are

We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves--the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds--never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.

Looking at ourselves this way is very different from our usual habit. From this perspective we don't need to change: you can feel as wretched as you like, and you're still a good candidate for enlightenment. You can feel like the world's most hopeless basket case, but that feeling is your wealth, not something to be thrown out or improved upon. There's a richness to all of the smelly stuff that we so dislike and so little desire. The delightful things--what we love so dearly about ourselves, the places in which we feel some sense of pride or inspiration--these also are our wealth.

When we hear about compassion, it naturally brings up working with others, caring for others. The reason we're often not there for others--whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us--is that we're not there for ourselves. There are whole parts of ourselves that are so unwanted that whenever they begin to come up we run away.

Because we escape, we keep missing being right here, being right on the dot. We keep missing the moment we're in. Yet if we can experience the moment we're in, we discover that it is unique, precious, and completely fresh. It never happens twice. One can appreciate and celebrate each moment--there's nothing more sacred. There's nothing more vast or absolute. In fact, there's nothing more!

Only to the degree that we've gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we've related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough, and enough of a warrior to be willing to feel the pain of others. To that degree we will be able to take on the pain of others because we will have discovered that their pain and our own pain are not different.

-Pema Chodron

Pause for a moment and remember someone or something you love. . . . .

Imagine allowing your heart to fill with this love. . . . .

Now imagine this love spreading out and filling all your organs

Your Liver Your Kidneys Your Bladder Your Lungs . . . . .

Now let it expand and fill your Whole Body, to the tips of your
Fingers and Toes and right up to the top of your Head .

Take Your Time Slow right down and really feel this loving energy.

Now can you imagine this Love expanding beyond your Body and filling
the room.

Let it expand , through the walls, through the building , let it expand
to fill the whole world and beyond.

This Love Is Always Loving You . Always waiting for You to look inside
and Feel its Quiet Loving Presence.

         

         I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough

         to make every hour holy.

         I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough

         just to stand before you like a thing,

         dark and shrewd.

         I want my will, and I want to be with my will

         as it moves towards deed;

         and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,

         when something is approaching,

         I want to be with those who are wise

         or else alone.

         I want always to be a mirror that reflects your whole being,

         and never to be too blind or too old

         to hold your heavy, swaying image.

         I want to unfold.

         Nowhere do I want to remain folded,

         because where I am bent and folded, there I am lie.

         And I want my meaning

         true for you. I want to describe myself

         like a painting that I studied

         closely for a long, long time,

         like a word I finally understood,

         like the pitcher of water I use every day ,

         like the face of my mother,

         like a ship

         that carried me

         through the deadliest storm of all.

               - Rainer Maria Rilk

Today is World Kindness Day

Thich Nhat Hanh once said, "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile and sometimes your smile is the source of your joy." Lets spread some love and kindness with our smiles today.

Investigating High Pat On Horse

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Hermits in New York

Let's take hermits. People today think being a hermit is a very unhealthy thing to do. Very antisocial, doesn't contribute anything to everybody else - because everybody else is busy contributing like blazes, and a few people have to run off and get out of the way. But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything. That every little insect that comes buzzing around you is a messenger, and that little insect is connected with human beings everywhere else. You can hear. You become incredibly sensitive in your ears and you hear far-off sounds. And just by the very nature of isolating yourself and becoming quiet, you become intensely aware of your relationship with everything else that's going on.

So if you really want to find out how related you really are, try a little solitude off somewhere, and let it begin to tell you how everything is interdependant in the form of what the Japanese call 'jijimugi'. 'Ji' means a 'thing event,' so it means 'between thing event and thing event, there is no block.' Every thing in the world, every event, is like a dewdrop on a multidimentional spider's web, and every dewdrop contains the reflection of all the other dewdrops. But you see, the hermit finds this out through his solitide, and so also human beings can aquire a certain solitude, even in the middle of New York City. It's rather easier, as a matter of fact, to find solitude in New York City than it is in Des Moines, Iowa.

But the point is that a human represents a certain kind of development, wherein a maximal sense of his oneness with the whole universe goes hand in hand with the maximum development of his personality as somebody unique and different. Whereas the people who are of course trying to develop their personality directly and taking a Dale Carnegie course on how to win friends and influence people, or how to become successful - all those people come out as if they came from the same cookie cutter. They don't have any personality.

--Alan Watts

Step Forward, Deflect Downwards & Punch from Heartworker on Vimeo.

In T'ai Chi we are reminded to forget self and follow the other,
another way of saying connect.

Connect with your whole self give the task in hand or the person
in front of you full wholehearted attention.

Imagine your energy reaching out to meet the person and surrounding
them with warm interested attention. Let yourself feel your energetic
interest.

We are so blessed to have so many ways that we humans con connect
and communicate, life becomes an amazing adventure when we begin
to see each encounter as the miraculous opportunity that it is.

Totality Not Perfection

The very idea of perfectionism drives people crazy. The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life till he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things. Totality is possible, perfection is not possible.

There is a tremendous difference between perfection and totality. Perfection is a goal somewhere in the future, totality is an experience herenow. Totality is not a goal, it is a style of life. If you can get into any act with your whole heart, you are total. Totality brings wholeness and totality brings health and totality brings sanity.

The perfectionist completely forgets about totality. He has some idea how he should be, and obviously time will be needed to reach that idea. It can't happen now -- tomorrow, day after tomorrow, this life, maybe next life ... so life has to be postponed.

But if you have an idea what you want to be in the future, today you will live very partially because your main concern becomes the future. Your eyes become focused on the future, you lose contact with the real and the present -- and the tomorrow will be born out of the real with which you are not in contact. The tomorrow will come out of today, and today was unlived.

The English word devil is very beautiful. If you read it backwards it becomes lived. That which is lived becomes divine, and that which is not lived becomes devil. Only the lived is transformed into godliness; the unlived turns poisonous. Today you postpone, and whatsoever remains unlived in you will hang around you like a weight. If you had lived it you would have been free of it.

--Osho