Moment to Moment - Etty Hillesum

...every moment gives birth to a new moment...

Life courses through one as a constant current in a great

series of moments, each having its own place in the day.

...whenever suffering thrusts itself upon us we must not
avoid it - but accept it.

Does that mean I am never sad, that I never rebel, always
acquiesce, and love life no matter what the circumstances?

No, far from it.  I believe that I know and share the many
sorrows and sad circumstances that a human being
experiences, but.....they pass through me, like life itself;
as a broad, eternal stream, they become part of that stream,
and life continues...

...ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to
cosmic sadness?

Your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself.
You mustn't run away from it, but bear it like an adult.
Do not relieve your feelings through hatred, do not seek
to be avenged on all German mothers, for they, too,
sorrow at this very moment for their slain and murdered
sons.  Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself
that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and
courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate.
But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and
instead reserve most of the space inside for your hatred and
thoughts of revenge - then sorrow will never cease in this
world and will multiply...

Etty Hillesum
From: Etty Hillesum - Essential Writings
by Annemarie S. Kidder

Etty was Dutch living in Nazi occupied Netherlands
during the Holocaust, and died in Auschwitz at the age
of 28 or 29. Her writings were taken from her journals.

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"walking in Divine shoes"

~

May all those observing Hanukkah
find peace in their sorrow...

 

 

The "Caregiver"...

I have to find a way through this...

I am missing quiet times in the Silence;
- writing; poems, if they arise;
and emails to friends; or chapters 
for future books - never to be published -
ghost stories
about a life unlived...

I am missing the life I had -
or rather - the rhythm with the Life I lived:
quiet, slow, restful - a contemplative's elder years;
that allowed me to spontaneously express from the deeper,
quieter space of Being - now frozen in an emotionally
draining time-bound reality,
that at times feels unreal, unfamiliar.

I got caught in a time warp somewhere
by someone else's dreamscape...

I am paralyzed, unexpressive in many ways,
flatlined by my life experience;
choked on life's challenges big enough to kill one's spirit;
trying to be kind, compassionate and caring,
and somehow magically pulling it off,
with a little humor at times,
while my own life slowly wanes into non-existence.

I need my Life back - although it will never be the same
again...  The Life energy drains from the body - physically
flattened and barely functioning, becoming mechanical,
trying to hold onto my Heart,
through barrages of blame,
and arrows of long held hatred
from a troubled soul...

I have to find myself again -
before it's too late...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 4, 2023
1 am
(the quiet hour)

This just happens to be the anniversary of my
father's death 38 years ago - at age 61...
It seems like a lifetime ago in another reality -
and of course it was...  He has missed so much,
but maybe that's a good thing...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Tattered Truth - Thomas Merton

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all.
Nothing strange about this.  It is natural to man, an intelligent being,
to desire the truth. But actually, what we desire is not "the truth"
so much as "to be in the right."

To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we
are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature.

What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies
our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness.  This is not "the truth."
It is only an argument strong enough to prove us "right."
And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that
somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong?

Because we need them to be wrong.  For if they are wrong, 
and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: our selfishness
becomes justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly
condemned.

We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as
"truth."  What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie
should be proved "right," and our iniquity be vindicated as "just."

No wonder we hate.  No wonder we are violent.  No wonder we
exhaust ourselves in preparing for war!

And in doing so, of course, we offer the "enemy" another reason 
to believe that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready
to destroy us.

Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects
his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce
hatred, murder, disaster.

Thomas Merton

from - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
"Tattered Truth"

 

The Real Virus...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark night,
she awakes...

Inexplicable dread overtakes her...

... a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time...

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions,
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a
boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Racism,
Fear
 and
 Violence.

But those who know the beauty of
true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus"
cannot shatter the pristine Light of
a radiant Cosmos;
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and
movement of a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds
and the ineptness of
fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded lives and help us endure what
is happening in our country and the world...

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Why We Hate" - Steven Spielberg

There is a very interesting 6 episode series that we recently
watched on The Discovery Channel called
"Why We Hate", explaining the human capacity for hate. The
series titles are: Its Origins, Tribalism, Tools and Tactics,
Extremism, Crimes Against Humanity, and Hope.  Maybe
some of you have seen it as well...  It was produced by
Steven Spielberg and Alex Gibney of The Discovery Channel.

It is a provocative documentation of human's hatred toward
one another.  Episode 6 includes discussions with a neuro-
scientist, Emile Bruneau, that proved to be an eye-opener
for me, and brought some self-awareness.  He related it to
the brain and certain neural pathways, calling it
"biological hate" and how we can, in a sense, retrain the
brain through meditation! [which doesn't require that you
belong to a particular religion].  That despite our conditioning,
our environment, our *learned* prejudices, our isms, our "tribe"
[which would include our "religious" tribes, not just our race
and ethnicity] we can *unlearn* our innate, conditioned
capacity for hate for those we *perceive* to be different from
"us." The Us vs them mentality.

If you are on Comcast/Xfinity you can watch it On Demand.
You can also watch it on Amazon Prime, which requires
membership, although you can evidently pay to watch individual
episodes.  In which case watch episodes 5 & 6 and you'll get
the most important parts.  The first episodes are good, but a
little slow.  On the computer you can go to
Discovery.com/shows/why-we-hate and you can view episodes
there on "DiscoveryGo."  We were able to watch the Trailer
for free...

It's worth the watch!

Here's the link to the Trailer with Steven Spielberg
on "DiscoveryGo"

A brave and startling truth - Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons
and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is nor perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon or Mother Mississippi who,
without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouth abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in it labor
And the body is quieted in awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,
irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it,
We, this people, on this wayward floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible,
we are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

Maya Angelou

via No Mind's Land

~

Photo from the Internet

Violence - J. Krishnamurti

We are trying to understand violence as a fact,
not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being,
and the human being is myself.  And to go into the
problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it.
I must expose myself to myself - not necessarily
expose myself to you because you may not be interested -
but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing
right to the end...

Now it must be obvious to me that I am a violent human being.
I have experienced violence in anger, violence in hatred, creating
enmity, violence in jealousy and so on - I have experienced it, I
have known it, and I say to myself 'I want to understand this whole
 problem, not just one fragment of it expressed in war, but this
aggression in man that also exists in animals, of which I am a part.

Violence is not merely killing another.  It is violence when we use
a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when
we obey because of fear.  So violence isn't merely organized butchery
in the name of God, in the name of society or country.  Violence is
much more subtle, much deeper...

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a
European, or anything else, you are being violent.  Do you see why
it is violent?  Because you are separating yourself from the rest of
mankind.  When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality,
by tradition, it breeds violence.  So a man who is seeking to
understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion,
to any political party or system; he is concerned with the
total understanding of mankind.

The moment you protect a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that
you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger.
So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification...
Can you look at anger completely objectively?

To go beyond violence I cannot suppress it, I cannot deny it...
I have to look at it.  I must become intimate with it.  You have
to learn how to look at anger...  You have to learn why you are not
objective, why you condemn or justify.  You have to learn that you
condemn and justify because it is part of the social structure you live
in, your conditioning as a German or an Indian or a Negro
 or an American or whatever you happen to have been born with,
 all the dulling of the mind that this conditioning results in.

To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is,
including the anger...  The face of violence is not only outside
you but inside you...

J. Krishnamurti
excerpt from: Freedom from the Known

via - The Beauty We Love

~

All violence begins with disconnection [a sense of separation].
All outward violence begins as inner loneliness [a sense of not belonging].

[We must] break the code of disconnection...

Glenn Doyle Melton

From the article:
One Teacher's Brilliant Strategy to Stop Future School Shootings

Kindness - Penn Jillette

...All I want of America now is kindness.  That's all.
The past few years have filled too many of our friends and
neighbors with hate, and it breaks my heart.  Some people
started acting hateful, crazy and nasty so that they could win,
and then people who disagreed with them acted the same way.
They disagree in content but agree wholeheartedly in tone.

So many of us now agree with the message of hate, and play
"ideology" as team sports.  The message doesn't matter when
the medium is hate.  My friends who work on TV, people I
love personally, are using a tone and a meanness in their jobs
that they never used before.  Is hate where the money is?
I don't know if fighting fire with fire actually works, but I
do know that fighting hate with hate never works.

It makes me cry.  I've read about family members not invited
for Thanksgiving dinner because of political disagreements.
The Clash sang "anger can be power" and I believed it.  Maybe
I still believe it, but maybe I don't want power any more.
Can't we replace the word "evil" with the word "wrong?"
Everyone is wrong sometimes and nobody is ever evil.
The America I want is kind to people who are wrong.

I'm like a dog.  I don't hear words anymore, I just hear tone.
Anyone whose tone is kind will get my complete support.
Libertarian, Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Green...anything
else you got.  I've always been left out of team sports.  I don't
want to win enough.  I'm not part of a team.  I'm part of
humanity.  I want kindness.  There's no other team for me.
Let's love each other, and then discuss how to run the country
together.

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller

With thanks to The Beauty We Love
for content and photo

A Plague of Intolerance - Thomas Merton

A mass movement readily exploits the discontent and frustration
of large segments of the population which for some reason or
other cannot face the responsibility of standing on their own
feet.  But give them a movement to join, a cause to defend, and
they will go to any extreme, stop at no crime, intoxicated as they
are by the slogans that give them a pseudo-religious sense of
transcending their own limitations.  The member of a mass
movement, afraid of his own isolation, and his own weakness as
an individual, cannot face the task of discovering within himself
the spiritual power and integrity which can be called forth only
by love.  Instead of this, he seeks a movement that will protect
his weakness with a wall of anonymity and justify his acts by
the sanction of collective glory and power.  All the better if this
is done out of hatred, for hatred is always easier and less subtle
than love.  It does not have to respect reality as love does.  It
does not have to take account of individual cases.  Its solutions
are simple and easy.  It makes its decisions by a simple glance
at a face, a colored skin, a uniform.  It identifies an enemy by
an accent, an unfamiliar turn of speech, an appeal to concepts
that are difficult to understand...  This is not "ours", he says.
This must be brought into line - or destroyed.

[Because of] this universal infection of fanaticism, the plague of
intolerance, prejudice and hate, which flows from the crippled
nature of mankind... [we] must labor with inexhaustible
patience and love, in silence, perhaps in repeated failure,
seeking tirelessly, wherever we can, to restore the capacity of
 love...

Thomas Merton
from - Disputed Questions
(written in the 1960's)

Thomas Merton was a Christian Trappist Monk
and social activist in the 1960's.  He was a strong
supporter of non-violence and civil rights.  In his
later years he became interested in Zen Buddhism
and promoted an East-West dialogue.  

He died in Bangkok in 1968.

~

Thanks to The Beauty We Love