Decide to Network
Use every letter you write
Every conversation you have
Every meeting you attend
To express your fundamental beliefs and dreams
Affirm to others the vision of the world you want
Network through thought
Network through action
Network through love
Network through the spirit
You are the center of a network
You are the center of the world
You are a free, immensely powerful source
Of life and goodness
Affirm it
Spread it
Radiate it
Think day and night about it
And you will see a miracle happen:
The greatness of your own life.
In a world of big powers, media, and monopolies
But of six billion individuals
Network is the new freedom
The new democracy
A new form of happiness.

—Robert Muller

A traveler, who has lost his way, should not ask, “Where am I?” What he really wants to know is, “Where are the other places?” He has got his own body, but he has lost them.

–Alfred North Whitehead

[via Whiskey River]

According to recent research, older people do not tend toward increased crabbiness with age. If anything, their relationships tend to be more peaceful. The suggestion is that as we get wiser with experience, we spend less time trying to change people into our image and likeness. We spend more time taking people as they are and enjoying them in any way we can.

I think it’s a trend that could work at any age, and if anything, postponing this sage insight simply lacks merit. In part, it’s an expectation that no one person – even we! – cannot be all things to all people. It’s a good day when we can be one good thing to each person. In the world of culinary metaphors, why would we depend on any ingredient to offer all of the value of the others? Why wouldn’t we enjoy the simplicity of value scope offered by each ingredient?

There is a unique peace when we receive just what people have to offer, and nothing more, and nothing less.

–Jack Ricciuto, Jack/Zen

About love, divine love, whole love: Freedom, in a way, is higher than love. Love gives way to freedom. Love realizes the ascendancy of freedom. Love realizes the peak that freedom is. When you realize your original face, that authentic presence that flows from the vastness of your inner space in one continuous stream to the vastness of your outer space; when you realize the wholeness and aloneness of this space; when you realize the sheer bliss of this undivided consciousness — you realize freedom. You realize you are already free. You realize that freedom is inherent in your very being. Without fixation on ego, without identification with a separate self, without the projection of time, without past or future, what are you? Realizing this luminous emptiness of your original face, you realize you are free; you realize you cannot be confined by anything. You are freedom itself, your consciousness is inherently free and unbounded.

Or we can look at it from the other direction. What is it that binds you, imprisons you, restricts, restrains, limits, confines and defines? You are gradually becoming very, very clear about what imprisons you; that which creates your prison walls; that which keeps you from your treasure house within, keeps you from your heart’s deepest desire, keeps you separate, alienated, suffering. Ego fixation, with its want and fear, its preoccupation with thinking, the mind identified self with its allegiance to time, takes you out of the now, has you live an inauthentic, neurotic, stale life of suffering. Our deep allegiance to this ego structure keeps us from the freedom of our original nature. We know it is possible to return to the freshness and freedom of our true nature. Slowly, slowly we draw distinctions which help us differentiate the real from the unreal.

–Akilesh, Graceful Presence

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.

–Barbara Kingsolver

The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and their destination.

–John Schaar

Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.

–Louise Driscoll

I have a dream that is beginning to manifest, but it is possible that it will be curtailed.

I am trying not to make negative predictions as a means of protecting myself against disappointment. Bracing myself for not getting what I want is a habitual response which I developed years and years ago. In truth, it is just as possible that the situation will resolve itself in the way I want it. Agitating myself and generating negative energy creates misery and, for all I know, might affect the outcome, bringing me the conclusion I fear. What is the sense in that?

Instead, I am trying to sit with the unknown. I am trying to focus on what matters in this moment. Eckhart Tolle would conclude that the issue concerning me is not my life, but my “life situation.” He believes that we live in psychological time, mostly focused on the past or future, and thus miss experiencing life. He encourages using one’s senses fully, to become absorbed in The Moment. Eckhart purports that all problems are illusion of the mind. He writes:

Focus your attention on the now and tell me what problem you have at this moment. I am not getting any answer because it is impossible to have a problem when your attention is fully in the Now. A situation needs to be either dealt with or accepted. Why make this into a problem? The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts. This is normal, and it is insane.

–Eckhart Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now

That last sentence makes me smile. What I take from this is that when I begin to fret over something that I will not know the answer to for awhile, or when I worry about an issue which is not directly bearing down on my life at this moment, I am creating pain for myself. And I am missing my life.

Ah, this wisdom, it is difficult to apply! In fact, Tolle might even disagree with Driscoll, saying that to keep a dream in one’s heart is a distraction from living, because it pulls one’s attention to the future.

Writing about this helps to a point, but only in that it provides me the relief of expression, since writing is one way I make sense of my life. I’m not the only one out there with a hope that may be dashed, who has to live with not knowing until the situation develops to reveal the answer (though having company in this doesn’t exactly comfort). This is an opportunity to activate myself, to live the spiritual practice of awareness and immersion in the moment, to wonder and be amazed and grateful.

Oh, by the way, it does appear that my blog break is over. And here’s an explanation: a number of days ago I received some negative feedback on a post that stirred up a lot of painful emotion (the issue I posted about was painful to me, as were a couple of comments). The post — which, being an expression of myself, is equivalent to I — was used by this person as part of an essay critiquing Buddhist blogs; my post became an object lesson, because it did not reflect this person’s idea of what a mindful person would post. (Note: I’m not a declared Buddhist, nor do I claim expertise on the religion, or any religion.) My response to the pain was to retreat; I wanted to protect myself. To the author’s credit, he did not use identifying information nor link to my blog. But given the depth of pain, I shut down. Again, this is something Tolle would assert is part of psyhological time. It is not happening in my life now; it is not real, and the pain I feel arises from clinging to past events and beliefs about them. So, I’m back.

Let go, and respond to the immediate needs around you. Don’t get caught in some false perception of yourself. There will always be another person more gifted than you. And don’t perceive your position as important, but be ready to serve at any moment. If you can let go of who you think you are, you will become free — ready to love others. If you learn to see your impermanence, you will be able to live for the moment and not miss opportunities to love by pushing things into the future.

–Thich Nhat Hanh

Periodic breaks are needed from blogging and the whole web world. I’ve got a lot of tasks to attend to, and the weather is begging me to be outdoors more. And sometimes I get tired of what’s going on in my own head — thinking… feh! That’s a certain way to get caught up on false sense of self. So it’s time to return to the present, and to the embodied, for a little while. I’ll be back from Austin on the 28th — rested and refreshed!

Life has been intensely busy here with the end of the school year. I’ve also been more tired lately, and taking care of my body by giving it much-needed rest. Between these two things, I’ve had little time and no energy to look for stimulating quotes; nor have I generated a single original (let’s not even hope for profound!) thought myself. Otherwise, though, all is generally well. I’m going to miss my students; we’ve come so far since January.

But wait! Here’s a quote from something I read last week. It also contains a clue as to what’s been going on with me.

You yourself are the child you must learn to know, rear, and above all enlighten. To demand that others should provide you with textbook answers is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. Seek in your child the undiscovered part of yourself.

–Janusz Korczak

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice. The myths of the hero, for example, are not meant to give us historical information about Prometheus or Achilles — or for that matter, about Jesus or the Buddha. Their purpose is to compel us to act in such a way that we bring out our own heroic potential.

–Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase