If there are times when things go terribly right in the inner worlds and you’re beginning to think you might be pretty hot stuff, or when things go terribly weird in the inner worlds and you’re beginning to wonder how your sanity’s going to survive, remember this is why humanity was given a sense of humor. To get back to living in balance and harmony, step back, take a good hard look at everyday life, and put your spiritual development in perspective (an excellent reason for keeping little kids and critters around). For heaven’s sake, don’t take life (or the afterlife) too seriously. It’s a journey. As long as our hearts are in the right place, things will work out in the end.
Category Archives: Quotes
Lead Your Geek
The last excerpt from The Geek Handbook for awhile:
3.2.4 Eating Out With Your Geek Part III
Occasionally your geek may be required to go to formal functions. Whether he is nominated for an award in the cutthroat field of fontography, attending a product launch, or having dinner with the new CIO, the prospect of eating with utensils in public is likely to throw your geek into a tizzy. Suggesting a practice meal or even etiquette lessons beforehand can result in a clamer, less babbling geek. Hoarding (see section 3.5.1) can kick into gear when your geek sees a fancy buffet table. Don’t be surprised if you catch your geek stuffing canapes and other weird foods he would never eat into the pockets of his ill-fitting suit. Gently lead your geek away from the food and ask him to introduce you to the members of his team. They will be the ones in the corner seeing if they can hack into the sound system.
Really
The Way is really rather exasperating.
–R.H. Blyth
Who, Indeed?
An incisive polemic from a unique perspective:
Look at the shit that’s passed off as food these days. Look at the sugar-soaked, over-fatted (or defatted), over-preserved, artificial, neonized, irradiated, modified, processed, pesticide-smeared crap that’s fed to children. Look at the non-food that wrapped and packaged and stamped with a decade-long ‘sell-by’ date. Look at the tallow-injected, deep-fried, fortified, refined and shrink-wrapped products in our supermarkets. Who would eat this?
Excellent question. Click on the link to read more.
Seeking Higher Realms
From The Skeptical Mystic
Too many people wander about the everyday world in a partial daze, wishfully dreaming about the difference in seeing spiritual worlds. If you can’t notice the beauty, the wondrous patterns within the everyday world, how do you expect to be aware of the more subtle patterns in higher dimensions?
Open yourself to what’s right in front of you. Quit insisting that you see a sign from beyond or that you hear God’s answer to your prayer (and that the sign or answer appear in the same form as you’ve read about or as you’ve seen in the movies). Start instead by looking more deeply at the world in which you live. Answers will come when we shift out of long-established mindsets and open to new relationships and interactions. Think of it as seeing between the lines.
Even If
Even if you have a lot of work to do, if you think of it as wonderful, and if you feel it as wonderful, it will transform into the energy of joy and fire, instead of becoming a burden.
— Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, The Practice of Dzogchen
The Advantages Of Living With A Geek (If You Know What To Value)
More from The Geek Handbook:
3.2.4 Eating Out With Your Geek Part I
Occasionally you may attempt to take your geek off-site for a dining experience. A meal off the grid presents several challenges. Try incorporating your geek’s surfing skills into the planning. Say to your geek, “I wonder if there is a Moroccan restaurant near the movie theater, with parking, and entrees between twelve and fifteen dollars?” Your geek will happily hunt down this information for you on various city guides and search engines, while the phone books of your father’s generation sit sullenly. Warning: this option does limit you to eating at places in the search engines, but at least you’re getting out of the house.
3.2.4 Eating Out With Your Geek Part II
Ready to go? Your geek will arm himself with a palmtop, cellphone, GPS, beeper, and anything else he can think of. Your nice meal at a local bistro has turned into an Apollo mission. There are two ways to confront this. One is to go to a geek-themed restaurant which provides an arcade or other stimulating environment. He won’t need his silicon security blanket if you give him a roll of quarters. The other strategy is to appeal to your geek’s rebel side. There is a moment in many geek narratives where the hero is required to go forth with no technology to help him. Remember, the Federation always ultimately beat the Borg with nothing but their human ingenuity even when all shields were down. Carelessly say to your geek that you know some programmers need those silly accouterments, but you know that your geek is so efficient that they aren’t necessary. Besides, surely if the server goes down, either the company will send out a SWAT team for him, or he will just know. It is like a mother hearing her baby cry.
The Way Of Transformation
The way of transformation lies in surrendering our illusions of control and learning to live with uncertainty. It means taking pleasure in our fundamental questions about life rather than rushing toward simplistic answers. It means we strive not just to understand but to embody our understanding. The way of transformation requires a special kind of toughness and willingness to experience emotional intensity. It requires humility and a foolishness born of the desire to live and love with abandon.
And the payoff? The payoff is the ecstasy that comes through seeing, with openheartedness, things as they are, and allowing feeling, sensation and love to flow through us. Ecstasy is a word we can hardly use without conjuring thoughts of drug use, madness, or inability to function. But when I speak of ecstasy, I am not talking about some dangerous state where we are out of control of our actions or out of touch with reality. (The only threat that ecstasy poses is that it breaks down our illusions of separateness and it reveals the madness of heartless competition and greed). Instead, it is an intense joy available to most everyone. The mystics say it is our essential nature, our natural state. Once we open ourselves to the ecstatic flow of feeling and energy in our bodies, we are less bound to old ideas about the kinds of protections that are needed to live in this world. Our own ability to open and connect becomes a source of power in times of conflict or adversity.
–Kenneth Robinson, Alaya Process facilitator
You can also read an essay he wrote reflecting on his experience with yoga and healing here. I miss working with him and his co-facilitators. I miss the group. But hey, I’m in California. This place, if nothing else, is rich with venues for growth. I’ve only just arrived. Patience. In time, I’ll see more. (Patience is one of my developing traits!)
A Gorgeous Death
I love reading Kat’s Paws. She writes poetic nuggets, such as:
It’s cool enough for pants today. That fall chill is nosing it’s way in. Just slightly. Enough to let you know that, hey, underneath all this greenery there’s a gorgeous death about to occur. The fireworks of fall leaves. The send-off of warmth.
Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. Every year since leaving, I become wistful for Nature’s northeast extravaganza. There’s also something compelling about the “gorgeous death” concept. Culturally we aren’t comfortable with death. It’s difficult enough to die with dignity here. What would a gorgeous death be like?
Instilling Religious Values In Children
I’ve been watching a number of very religious parents attempting to instill proper religious attitudes in their children. I know the parents’ motives are sincere, but let’s get real. You can’t just tell children never to be angry and expect they will grow up to be loving persons. You can’t tell children they always have to share, to give up personal space and boundaries, to put everybody else’s needs before their own, and then expect them to grow up with wide-open hearts. It just won’t happen — not on the inside.
You can teach children to behave somewhat ethically by grounding them in a lot of rules and regulations that control how they act in specific situations. Even when it comes about by suppressing all their inner nasty, wicked thoughts and resentments, children reared this way do end up functioning as responsible and socially moral adults. I just wish you could see the emotional junk buried beneath that outer shell of righteous goodness.
It seems a lot more sane to acknowledge and accept honest feelings — then take a look afterward at options, at acceptable ways in which the child can respond. How wonderful if we could teach children to be personally responsible for their social interactions, and free them up so they could use religion as a source of comfort and inspiration.
I agree wholeheartedly, and I couldn’t have said it better. (The author left a comment on a recent post, and I’m very excited to have found her blog. It looks juicy!)
What The Mystic Means By Faith
When the question of faith arises, the orthodox always think that it is their religion which is being spoken of. To have faith in a religion, in the priests or clergy, in a certain dogma, ceremony, principle, or in a certain form of teaching, this is what is usually understood by the word faith. The mystic does not mean by faith a belief in a certain religion or dogma or ceremony or book or teacher, he means trust, a trust even in the absence of reason.
–Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid `Inayat Khan
From: A Meditation Theme for Each Day Selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat `Inayat Khan
Ebb And Flow
Human interaction follows the basic rhythm of moving toward, then moving away, like ocean waves against the shore. Feeling at ease with this pattern is part of the art of living.
It is important to learn that one can sustain a loss and endure. Able to move apart as well as to come together, individuals can free themselves from a crippling need which makes them hang on too cruelly here, avoid becoming reinvolved there. Getting and losing are part of the same process: one is its beginning, the other its end. But they follow one another in circular, not linear, fashion. We move toward one another, then apart, then toward, then apart…. The process, to and fro, is always changing, yet it is always the same.
Each leave-taking underscores our own limitedness and mortality. We learn that we cannot control others as we might wish. We cannot control fate. We are, and we are not, masters of our destinies. We move, now with others, now alone, now happily, now sadly, in a kinetic and continuous dance whose end comes only with our own, final separation from life itself. Understanding these rhythms of human relatedness will turn unavoidable separations into chances to grasp further the condition of our human being-in-the-world.
–Excerpted from “Separation anxiety…” by Michael L. Glenn, M.D., in the American Journal of Psychotherapy 25, 1971, 437-446.
When I moved from Syracuse to Austin in 1994, I experienced a tsunami-shift in rhythm. I was eager to move into a new life. Yet I remember how surreal it felt at times to be shopping for groceries, filling my car up, or running an errand, aware of how very alone I was — a stranger among thousands. (I came from a much smaller city that I’d lived in for 31 years.)
There were times in those first years that I was pierced with loneliness. I had friends, but most of them were married and had children, so I rarely had someone just to “pal around” with. Structured activities at church also didn’t provide the sustained emotional connection I desired. It didn’t help that I was attempting to follow a spiritual path that I was inherently incompatible with; all my efforts to create intimate friendships in that context were destined to be short lived because I wasn’t truly being myself. Also, during those years I struggled with depression, the repercussions of being raped, and the loss of my feline companion, in whom I’d poured all my connective energy.
To console myself through that era, I symbolized love as an ocean — immense, unceasing. The times I felt lonely I cast as low tide; I would remind myself the dry spell was temporary, that another time would come when I would feel flooded with connection. I was always loved. I just might not always feel it. That concept didn’t necessarily make me feel better quickly, but it did help me as I learned how to be alone, how to become my own best friend. The above quote was given to me by my therapist when I was leaving group and graduating from my master’s program. I found it as I unpacked last week. How timely!
Yesterday and today I find myself feeling sad and often teary. I don’t miss my former house, nor Austin particularly. (Well, I do a little, but not the heat!) I miss my friends and family there. I miss the easy companionship of getting together. I miss the familiarity with places, events, and venues; I knew my way around. After about five years there, I began running into acquaintances and friends all over the city, and this increased the longer I lived there. I was home.
Santa Clara has not yet become home. I know in time it will. What feels similar to the last move is a sense of starting over professionally. Then I had a B.A. but wasn’t sure what I could do with it (and I was quite ready to work someplace other than a library, my career of ten years). Now I have a master’s and a counseling license that doesn’t transfer, and again I’m not certain what direction to head in. This time, fortunately, there is no economic pressure on me to figure it out right away.
I’m meeting Siona for coffee today, and given what I know of myself and her, I think we will enjoy each other. It’s just that right now I’m experiencing the unique spiritual space of ending and beginning, which naturally brings to surface a variety of emotions. Accepting this, allowing myself to feel without judgment, giving the process its due — this is learning to understand my human being-in-the-world.
She Took Me Gently
I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life’s joy and sorrow.My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.I went through hell and saw there love’s raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled,
and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.I bowed my head low in humility,
and on my knees I begged of love,
“Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret.”She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth,
and spoke softly in my ear,
“My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”–The Dance of the Soul Vadan, Alankaras
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid ‘Inayat Khan
It’s A Style Statement
In our supposedly nonjudgmental, acceptance-valuing culture, control-freak style mavens are all over TV, telling people what’s wrong with them, and audiences eat it up. What gladiators were to ancient Rome, makeovers are to us today: bloody spectacles for the masses to watch the abject fight for their lives. The slaves of yore are now women hobbled by poor access to cosmetic surgery and decent haircuts. Seeing life as a big style problem to be solved by style solutions is no longer an occupational hazard restricted to fashionistas, drag queens and neurotics.
–Rhonda Lieberman, How I Picked My Shrink
A Torch On My Path
If anyone strikes my heart, it does not break, but it bursts, and the flame coming out of it becomes a torch on my path.
–Gayan: Gamakas
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid ‘Inayat Khan
In my previous post I joked about how bourgeois I’ve become. For many years I struggled financially, working at meager-wage jobs while getting my undergraduate degree. Throughout that time, I also battled major depression. I’m certain impoverishment and limited opportunity increased the symptoms; likewise, being depressed didn’t do much to help me advance more quickly. I plugged away at my goal despite the circumstances and eventually achieved it; then I set more and continued. Gradually my life circumstances improved; when I met my fiancé, they did so dramatically.
As a child I was incredibly, exquisitely, and often painfully sensitive to other people’s feelings and moods. I intuited the atmosphere and responded accordingly. If trouble was brewing, I would anxiously try to appease the parties involved. Or I would retreat. When my brother was born, I was eight. I remember being so identified with him that when he cried, I felt pain and cried. This I experienced into his todder years.
At some point, my brain equated economic with emotional struggle and skewed my thinking. Pain became a virtue, but not a healthy one. I felt existential angst which overwhelmed me. I equated being spiritual with being deprived. I gave of myself and my funds not only because I was kind, but because I wished someone would give generously to me. Wishful, magical, childish thinking. A refusal to grow up, on some level. And I called it compassion.
Emotions are not compassion. Compassion for others may evoke feelings, but it is a disposition separate from them. As my lot in life has improved, I’ve had to reconsider what it means to be compassionate. I’m materially comfortable. With that ease has come apathy masquerading as detachment. What I’m trying to say here is that I need to remember to be compassionate now that my economic situation has improved. Comfort has a way of teaming up with complacency to seduce one into forgetfulness. On the other hand, I don’t need to be broke, to suffer, in order to extend caring for others. Such ingrained beliefs are difficult to transform, but it can be done.
Because I Live With and Love One
From the The Geek Handbook:
1.4.3 Your Geek Spouse or Lover
Although the geek relationship does pose challenges in formation and in practice, it can be a very rewarding one for both parties. Geeks are loving and supportive partners, they can fix things, and they rarely stray. They love children and often share their interests. Watch your geek at the next family gathering: he’ll head straight for the play room, especially if there are Legos involved. Geeks are open to interfaith marriages and generally won’t rule you out for using a PC instead of a Mac or vice versa.
Known Bugs: Your friends may be taken aback initially. If fashion is important for you, think long and hard about dating a geek. Some mullets are a badge of honor. Geeks have been known to date nongeeks for less than honorable reasons: a nongeek lover can provide many excuses for equipment purchases (“to get you up to speed”) and are easily technically snowed.
Tip: You have to realize that the computer will be a vital presence in your relationship without allowing it to become threat or a rival. Keep your Geek Handbook near, and learn to tune out your friends.
Real Trust
He is an unbeliever who cannot believe in himself. The trust of someone who trusts another but does not trust himself is profitless. But someone who trusts another because he trusts himself has the real trust, and by this trust in himself he can make his life happy whatever his condition may be.
–Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid `Inayat Khan
From: A Meditation Theme for Each Day
Selected and arranged by Hazrat Pir Vilayat `Inayat Khan
To Reach Out
My heart is by now in its rightful place, in proximity to my hands, which are made to reach out, as I write, to all those around me, the living and the ancestral dead, clarifying the struggle for myself, and perhaps as well for others.
–Alice Walker, from Anything We Love Can Be Saved
Ah!
When before the beauty of a sunset or a mountain, you pause and exclaim, “Ah,” you are participating in divinity.
–Joseph Campbell
Body-Mind
There is no defense against an open heart and a supple body in dialogue with wildness. Internal strength is an absorption of external landscape. We are informed by beauty, raw and sensual. Through an erotics of place our sensitivity becomes our sensibility.
–Terry Tempest Williams, “Yellowstone: The Erotics of Place,” from An Unspoken Hunger
The basic creative energy of life — life force — bubbles up and courses through all of existence. It can be experienced as open, free, unburdened, fullof possibility, energizing. Or this very same energy can be experienced as petty, narrow, stuck, caught. Even though there are so many teachings, so many meditations, so many instructions, the basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mind — thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call “me” or “I.”
–Pema Chodron, “The Wisdom of No Escape,” from The Wisdom of No Escape