Accepting reality - a meandering...

As I awoke one morning recently, it came to me in my
half sleep that I had to accept death...
That my current life experience may be the
beginning of my end -
and that I need to accept that...

My body and mind immediately relaxed...

I get that it's not about getting my life back, as I have been
wanting, but about accepting the impermanence of my life;
of everything basically, including this particular life
circumstance; my *ideas* about how life is supposed to be,
or recovering my life, restoring it to what it was before...

I've heard this all before,
through different spiritual traditions,
but this time it came from within
and was organic,,,

It's about accepting impermanence,
accepting death; death of ways of life,
death of beliefs, death of ways of being,
death of the body...

Not trying to recapture, or restore everything
to the way it was - so that I can "finish" my life...

But letting go of the idea that Life has to be/go
a certain way...

There was great *relief* in realizing this
- a profound acceptance of reality...

I felt freed of everything that has bound me:
ways of thinking, perspectives, feelings about life...

And also realized that I have been resisting the little
deaths in my life - the changes that create disruption.

*Everything* changes, *everything* dies,
that is - changes form; form transforms itself
continuously...

It is the natural way of life itself;

it *is* the reality.

I'm going to die (my body that is) at some point and
maybe this life circumstance is just the
precursor to that,
the doorway to that...

But I keep trying to make this current experience
change, to stop in some way - resisting it -
when in reality it is an opening.

I was almost euphoric,
because changing my perspective means the end of
suffering, struggle, trying to make things happen, trying
to have a "spiritual" perspective about it all,
trying to find a way *out* of my experience...

(although this shift is gradual, as I discovered)...

Everything is impermanent, transient...

I'm accepting (ongoing) that reality...

Mystic Meandering
Sept. 8, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Reality Rupture - Pema Khandro Rinpoche

The Tibetan term bardo, the "intermediate state" [or the
in-between state], is not just a reference to the afterlife.  It
also refers more generally to moments when gaps appear,
inter-ruptions to the continuity that we otherwise project onto
our lives.  The interruptions in our normal sense of certainty
are what is being referred to by the term bardo.  To be precise,
bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality

and it is no longer available to us. [there is no going back].  
There is a total rupture in our who-I-am-ness.

We have been holding onto the idea of an inherent continuity
in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves on
artificial ground.

Anyone who has experienced this kind of loss knows what it
means to be disrupted...  In these moments we lose our grip on
the old reality and yet have no sense what a new one might be
like.  There is no ground, no certainty, and no reference point -
there is, in a sense, no rest.

There is rupture in our reality...

A direct experience of disruption felt a the core of our being,
and there is no longer any use manufacturing artificial security.

The bardo teachings are really about recognizing the value of 
giving up the game, which we play without even knowing it.
We hold pictures/images of our ideal self in an ideal world.  We
imagine that if we could only manipulate our circumstances or
other people enough, then that ideal self could be achieved, and
in the meantime we pretend to have it together... and pursue
reality as we think it should be...

When we suffer disruption. we find we just can't play the game
anymore.  Holding it all together is not an option.

Death and loss are great teachers, if we can open to the
experience of profound disruption.

Without some way of managing this experience, this unsettling
discontinuity, punctuated by occasional disruptions to the very
idea of our being, we never know if we are going to show up....

We contract with our wounded sense of self, and are dissociated
from our true nature, and make frantic efforts to create something
more ideal, more secure, more definite.

In a raw broken-open state, this place where we let go of all
games, there is actually a great sense of relief available to us,
a knowledge that we don't have to do it anymore - to *be* that;
and find way to disrupt our own habit of clinging to our
continuity story.

Emerging from the bardo, we reenter the flow of life with a
new sense of groundlessness: it is clear that "later" is not always
a luxury that will be available to us...  The perspective gained
in the bardo cuts through petty concerns.  It cuts through delusions
so that whatever we contact, we do so with raw presence, without
the denial of impermanence.  A new kind of openness becomes
available to us.

The rupture of the bardo inevitably leads to whatever is next and
appreciating the [losses] in our lives, and the bardo for what it is -
the pause - the end that clarifies what exactly we will now be
beginning...

Impermanence is not just an illuminator of loss.  It is the illuminator
of newness, the ever-unfolding moment and its creativity....

Pema Khandro Rinpoche

excerpts from
"Letting Go In the Bardo"

from Lion's Roar

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Perspective on Impermanence - Ajahn Chah

Now you must learn to be satisfied with the many years
you've already depended on your body.  You should
feel that it's enough.

You can compare it to household utensils that you've had
for a long time - your cups, saucers, plates and so on.
When you first had them they were clean and shining,
but now after using them for so long, they're starting to
wear out.  Some are already broken, some have disappeared,
and those that are left are deteriorating: they have no stable
form, and it's their nature to be like that.  Your body is the
same way.  It has been continually changing right from the
day you were born, though childhood, and youth, until
now it has reached old age.

Allow the mind to let go of its attachments.  The time is ripe.

It's the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your
family - they are all yours only in name; they don't  really
belong to you, they belong to nature.

It's like the water of a river.  It naturally flows down the
gradient; it never flows against it, and that is its nature.

The time is ripe - find your real home.

Ajahn Chah
Thai Buddhist Monk

Excerpt from an article in Lions Roar

First published Jan. 1, 1994
by permission of the Abbot,
Wat Pah Nanachat,
Thailand

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Snow owl on skylight

 

Pondering Impermanence...

The Eternal Being that inhabits the body is not aging -
but I am surprisingly surprised by the reality of the body's 
increasing decline: loss of memory, lack of stamina
and muscle functioning, etc...

I am on the off ramp and the inevitable dropping of the

body transition is surely coming...

Although grateful that the end of the body's struggles
is closer - (how close "she" doesn't know)
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a 
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve back
into cosmic dust, or be absorbed by the
Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.
I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -
every so often,
it gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Drop Into Freedom...

In my decline I have lost track
of how things are "supposed" to be...
of how things are "supposed" to "work" -
like life...

of finding my way to wherever it is that
I'm "supposed" to be going.

Somehow I've lost my "keys"...

I have grown weary 
of how things are...
of what I'm "supposed" to be doing...
of taking responsibility for things
I'm not responsible for...

of attachments to things that used to be important...

of the body and its ailments and loss of functioning...
of the *ideas* of "awakening" and "enlightenment"...
who "awakens"?
what "enlightens"?
Does it really matter?

Is this how impermanence works?

You lose your keys to things that don't really matter
so that at some point it all falls away
in its importance,
and you are liberated *from*
false ideas and premises,
from hopes and dreams
that keep you bound,
and you "drop"
into
Freedom

Mystic Meandering

April 2, 2024

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Sri Yantra

 

Fleeting Whispers...

Her past fades away -
mere images in a dreamland -
forgotten...

Her world fades away - unbelonging now -
a foreigner on a strange planet
whirling through space.
Kabuki theater...

Her mind fades - not remembering
the things she needs to remember -
unable to articulate what she has forgotten...

Her body fades - unable to do the things she used to do - 

challenged keeping pace with life -
frustration...

Her life, paper thin, fades to a shadowy form
unable to hold its color -
losing its luster...

We are impermanent, fleeting whispers of spirit
on a temporary journey -
this life experience...

And sometimes that story doesn't go the way
we have in mind...

It all fades away - eventually...

That is the natural state of things...

So she turns her inner compass
toward "Home" - toward Source -
that lies within her...

Mystic Meandering
Nov. 26, 2023

 

The Cosmic Spirit Lifts Us - Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Hermann Hesse
translation by Richard and Clare Winston

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Everything Falls Away...

Everything is falling away.
Systems and internal conceptual structures
are fracturing; all around you - disintegration.
Only a shadow of what they were...

You cannot mend this -
People believe what they want to believe,
think what they want to think.

Hold fast...
Hold fast - do not be moved.
Lean into the intensity and hold fast.

Be brave - the storm is yet to come...

Mystic Meandering

_/\_

I found this written on some scratch paper
while decluttering on 7/28
Have no idea when it was written, but seems
appropriate to what we are facing now,
in this realm of existence...

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

The Face of The Sacred...

 All life is a Cosmic Dance
and a play of perspectives from which
you see it...

Everything is temporary -
breath, thoughts - life;
existence itself, even the planet.
All experience is energy;
pain, depression, anger,
joy, love - a vibration...

The Face of The Sacred is revealed in every "bloom" -
every experience of Life - as it is -
no matter how painful...

Every flower has its own "face" - concealed.
But even in the pain of life it blossoms...

Source reveals ItSelf through our pain...

She pulls back the veils of concealment to reveal
our True Face - a beautiful reflection of Her "bloom",
hidden in the movements of Her mystical Dance of Life...

Mystic Meandering
May 24, 2022

with thanks to Mitch Rosacker of Self Discovery Studio
for the inspiration for the poem :)

Video - from a Friend of Mitch

Personal Commentary about the poem:
This poem came about as a result of a break through moment while
talking with Mitch - and - from the video of the Iris that he sent
me from a Friend.  When the woman pulled back the top petals of
the Iris to reveal a face inside the "bloom" I gasped...  And realized
that our True Face is hidden behind the veils (or masks) that we
wear - thus the line: "She pulls back the veils of concealment to
reveal our True Face - a beautiful reflection of Her "bloom" (Face).

_/\_

MM

The Dakini Speaks - Jennifer Welwood

My friends...
Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
Let's grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please. let's not be so shocked by them.
Let's not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.

This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
Let's stop making deals for safe passage:
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore...

Give everything for what cannot be lost...

Jennifer Welwood

~

Personal Note: I had to look up what a Dakini is :)
A Dakini, in the Tibetan tradition means "sky dancer/walker"
and is a tantric deity that might best be described as a female
embodiment of enlightened energy.  Dakinis are energetic
being in female form, evocative of the movement of
energy in space.

~

Photo Art - Mystic Meandering

Primal Energy

 

The Ancient Path of Dying - Sam Keen

 The basic motivation for human behavior is the need
to control our basic anxiety, to deny death in a world
where we are fated to die.  This is the terror: to have
emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness
of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning
for life and self-expression - and with all this yet die.

Since the terror of death is so overwhelming we conspire
to keep it unconscious.  The "vital lie character"
[personality] is the first line of defense that protects
us from the painful awareness of our helplessness...

Every child creates a personality...
So long as we stay obediently within the defense
mechanisms of our personality, the "character armor"
we feel safe and are able to pretend to avoid death.
And life escapes us while we huddle within the defended
fortress of "character" [personality].

But there's an ancient path of wisdom: practice dying.

Cultivating an awareness of death leads to disillusionment,
loss of the "character armor", and a conscious choice to
abide in the face of terror [death].  Instead of hiding
within the illusion of "character" we see our impotence
and vulnerability.  Living with the voluntary consciousness
of death, we can choose despair or trust the "vitality of the
cosmos", in the unknown god of life whose mysterious
"purpose" is expressed in the overwhelming drama of
cosmic evolution.

Sam Keen

From the Forward to
The Denial Of Death
by Earnest Becker
1973

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

It All Dissolves - Frank Ostaseski

 Earth dissolves into water.  Water dissolves into fire.
Fire dissolves into air.  Air dissolves into space.

Dying [Dissolving], in many cases, does not happen all of
a sudden.  It is a gradual process of withdrawing from life
in form.

When I speak of the four elements dissolving, I am not
speaking exactly of physical form.  Rather, I am pointing to
the ineffable but observable animating qualities...
The animating qualities also dissolve - apparently missing
when we are left only with the heaviness of the corpse
after death.

There is something beyond the four elements - the spirit,
soul, or animating presence.  The inner dissolution happens
simultaneously.  Our medical instruments and devices can
certainly measure the physical disintegration, but the inner
dissolution that happens simultaneously is subtle and still...

They are all dissolving - the elements and their associated
states and as a result, the self is dissolving as well.  This is
happening all the time, we just see it at the surface at the
time of dying.

Now who are you?

Fragility and impermanence are in the nature of life.  It's
all always coming together and falling apart - not just the
physical properties of life - and not just at the time of death.

Our sense of self is impermanent.  While illness can contract
us into an even smaller sense of self, many people who are
sick and dying speak of no longer being limited by the 
previous boundaries of their old, familiar identities.

We come to embody much wider identities.  The interior
life and the external world permeate each other,
they commingle.

Frank Ostaseski
The Five Invitations

~

With thanks Death Deconstructed for the photo...

The End Game...

Accumulated shadows
from a life lived
emerge into the present -
like forgotten orphans...

The melancholy mind
grieving its losses:
names, places and events
become vague histories;
even the present moment
is a blur - already passed.

She recognizes what's coming,
as the shadowy figures move over
her chess board of life,
playing the end games
until checkmate...

grieving her once lived life
in the game...

Mystic Meandering
May 21, 2021

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

A Preponderance of Ponderings on Impermanence - Krishnamurti

 We have to understand another phenomenon in life, which is
 death: death from old age, or disease, and accidental death,
through disease, or naturally.  We grow old inevitably, and
that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows
in our face...

So there is old age.  And there is this extraordinary thing called
death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened.  If we are
not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually
and have accepted the edicts of the intellect.  But it is still there.
And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body.
And we accept that naturally, because we see everything dying.

But what we do not accept is the psychological ending of the"me",
with family, with the house, with success, the things I have done,
and the things I have still to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations 
- and there is something more to do before I end!  And the
psychological entity, we're afraid that will come to an end -
the "me", the "I", the "soul", in various forms, words, that we give
to the center of our being.

Does it come to an end?  Does it have continuity?  The East 
has said it has a continuity: there is reincarnation, being born
better in the next life if you have lived rightly.  If you believe in
reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does, then in that idea is
implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now,
every day, matters tremendously.  Because in the next life you're
going to pay for it or be rewarded depending on how you have
lived.  So what matters is not what you believe will happen in
the next life, but what you are and how you live.  And that is
implied also when you talk about resurrection. Here (in the West)
you have symbolized it in one person and worship that person,
because you yourself don't know how to be reborn again in your
life now.

So what matters is how you live now - not what your beliefs are...
But we are also afraid that the center, called the "I", may come
to an end.  We ask:  Does it come to an end?

You have lived in thought; that is, you have given tremendous
importance to thinking.  But thinking is old; thinking is never new;
thinking is the continuation of memory.  If you have lived there,
obviously there is some kind of continuity.  And it is a continuity
that is over, finished.  It is something old; only that which ends
can have something new.  So dying is very important to understand;
to die; to die to everything that one knows. [believes]. 

  You know, one has collected so much, not only books, houses,
bank account, but inwardly. the memories of insults, the memories
of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of
holding onto your own particular experience, which gives you a
position.  To die to all that without argument, without discussion,
without any fear, just to give it up.  Do it psychologically - of course
we don't actually give up our wife/husband, our clothes, our children,
or our house, but inwardly, don't be attached to anything.  Love is
not attachment.  Where there is attachment, there is fear.  And fear
inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.

But to die to everything within oneself! [attachments, ideas, concepts,
beliefs].  This  means that the mind, which is not of thought - the mind
becomes utterly quiet, silent, naturally, without any force, without
any discipline.  And in light of that silence all actions can take place,
the daily living, from that silence.  And if one were lucky enough to
have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different
movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not
measurable by thought, because it is always new. It never dies.

J Krishnamurti
from talks in Europe 1968
Amsterdam
May 19, 1968

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
Ethereal Window

Pondering Impermanence...

With my mother's death last year and now with the COVID
Pandemic - feeling surrounded by death - I have become more
aware of my own mortality, especially at my age, with a body
malfunctioning, broken since birth.

So I have been pondering "death" - not morbidly, but with a
sense of the reality of the impermanence of this life of
physicality.  What can you do...  It's going to happen...
It's just the nature of time for things to fall away in the
cycle of life...

~

A few months ago, in my ponderings, I wrote this -

The "I" (the Eternal Being) that inhabits this body is not aging -
but "i" am surprised by the body's increasing decline - knowing
where it is headed - the inevitable...

death...

Saddened by the prospect -
although grateful that the end
to the body's struggles is closer -
how close "she" doesn't know -
but wonders what that will be like;
to witness the death of her body
and the possibility of a
"cosmic birthing" into a new "form"
of the Formless; or maybe dissolve
back into cosmic dust, or be absorbed
by the Vastness of the Eternal.
Sentience dissolving into the Eternal...

Who really knows...

All is transient here.
We're just passing through.

I shouldn't be surprised by this,
feeling the body's decline as I do -
but still -

gives me pause...

Mystic Meandering
Feb. 23, 2020

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Impermanence - Pema Chodron

Regard everything as transparent.
See through everything.

See that everything is in transition.

Liberate concepts and beliefs.

Let go of the need for an "answer"/solution.

Rest in the nature of your true Essence ~
the Primordial State of everything...

Be a child of fantasy.
Be curious instead of afraid.

Pema Chodron
Buddhist Teacher

~

Photo - by my husband :)

This is the frozen inside of a bucket
that was full of water that we had left outside
and froze overnight.

The ice had taken the form of the bucket.
A beautiful metaphor for
our "Spirit" that takes  human form, and then
"dissolves", or goes back to its natural state,
 when the body dies... like ice that melts
back to its natural state...

Be ahead of all parting - Rilke

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.

For beneath winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - more, gladly arise
into seamless life...
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a crystal cup that shatters as it rings.

Be. And know as well the need to not be;
know the great void where all things begin,

the infinite source of your most intense vibration,
so that you may give it your perfect assent
and come to completion now.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly...

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13

I combined the translations of Stephen Mitchell,
Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

With thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Eurydice was Orpheus' wife, but is also
a reference to the underworld in Greek Mythology.

The Dharma of Illness - Tarchin Hearn

In the midst of the 21st century, many people, in spite of all
their worldly wisdom, are still laden with medieval attitudes to
illness.....as if sickness is some kind of failing.  Physical dysfunction,
frailty or weakness is often experienced as if it were something to be
ashamed of, or guilty about - as if we have failed to meet some target
or some kind of socially acceptable ideal of good health.  We often
feel a need to make excuses for our suffering.  As if we needed to make
excuses for being vulnerably co-dependent dancings that we are!  We
try to identify a concrete cause for our condition, not only to help us
find a resolution to it but because the only alternative to identifying
a clear 'outer' cause seems to be that we ourselves, our behavior or our
lifestyles, are the cause.  It's our bad 'karma' or perhaps our bad diet or
lack of exercise or excessive stress, and illness is punishment or
retribution for our dissolute living!

[Could it be that] illness has invited us into a period of intensified
enquiry, contemplation and spiritual ripening...

An immeasurable expanse of experience and experiences surrounds
 and suffuses [us], a weaving together of uncountable situations and
circumstances - a seamless whole in the act of constant transformation
 - this dancing of [our] current knowing/beingness.

All complex, inter-dependent life dancings, in other words, all living
beings, have come about through the collaboration and balancing of
uncountable factors.  As the relationship between these factors
 changes, the system functions differently.  If the relationships change
 sufficiently, the functioning will change into something else
all together and the original functioning will no longer be there. 
These constantly changing relationships are a basic nature of all
interdependent arisings.  There is no shame in this.

Birth without death would not be life.  This continuous streaming of
birthing/dying is life in action.

~

Moving in the flow of compassion and deepening enquiry,
we engage with all beings in ways that support the integrity,
the stability and the beauty of the entire living world.

Engaging with this [flow] of birthing/dying living,
embracing it, surrendering to it, [we find that] the mystery
is tremendously integrated.
It is extraordinarily stable.  It has been in action for
billions of years.  It is breath-stoppingly beautiful in
all its vulnerability...

My medicine is wonderment...

Tarchin Hearn

Excerpts from:
The Dharma of Illness and The Medicine of Wonderment

Tarchin has a unique view of the inter-dependency of all life,
which he calls the "Holoverse", borrowing from the idea of
the Hologram.  The full article is worth the read, especially
for those dealing with a chronic health condition.  It really
helped me change my perspective on my own health issues.

(Dharma = Cosmic order)

The Dancing Matrix of Life - Tarchin Hearn

Life is a boundless matrix of dynamic relationship.
Ultimately, every action reverberates throughout the universe.
I responding to you.
You responding to me.
This responding to that.
That responding to this.

Responsiveness is the living heart of being...
Atoms, molecules, organs and organisms, families and societies;
entire ecosystems, biospheres, planes and galaxies;
all shifting, responding, constantly changing.
Each birthing of this is a dying of that.
Each dying of that is a birthing of this.
Responsive change is the very nature and fabric of what is.
Permanence is a mental abstraction; a hope, a need,
a convenient but potentially deadening freezing
of the actual creative dynamic of all our lives in action.

Suffering arises through trying to fix or make permanent
what is essentially a seamless fluid process.

May we cease grasping at permanence and
with heartful confidence, love, enthusiasm and wide awake
sensitivity, enter fully the great birthing/dying matrix of
responsive relating;
this ineffable, un-pin-down-able, present blessing of now.

Tarchin Hearn

~

Photo - Indra's Net of Jewels Mandala

2013

Failures of Kindness - George Saunders

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness...

Those moments when another human being was there, in front
of me, suffering, and I responded...sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope:
Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the
most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

Now, the million dollar question: Why aren't we kinder?

Here's what I think:

There's confusion in each of us, a sickness, really:
selfishness.

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions...
They are:

1) we're central to the universe (that is our personal story
is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really).

2) we're separate from the universe (there's US and "out there").

3) we're permanent (death is real, o.k., sure - but nor for me).

Now, we don't really believe these things - intellectually we know
better - but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and
they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others,
even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish,
more aware of what's actually happening in the present moment,
more open, and move loving.

So - second million dollar question: How might we DO this?

...to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.

One thing in our favor: some of this "becoming kinder" happens
naturally, with age.  It might be a simple matter of attrition:
as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish -
how illogical, really.  We come to love other people and are
thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality.  We get our
butts kicked by life, and people come to our defense, and help
us, and we learn that we're not separate, and don't want to be.
We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are
gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away
(someday, a long time from now.)  Most people, as they are,
become less selfish and more loving.  I think this is true.

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you
get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.
YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. 

That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality
 - your soul, if you will - is as bright and shining as any
 that has ever been.  Clear away everything that keeps you
 separate from this secret luminous place.  Believe it exists,
 come to know it better, nurture it, and share its fruits tirelessly.

George Saunders
author/writer

Excerpts from the convocation speech
to the graduating class of 2013
at Syracuse University

~*~

You are Eternal Being
unbounded and undivided.
Be kind to yourself
Open to your Heart...

If you want to help the planet
Live a life of compassion
Live a life of Love...

Papaji
From - The Truth Is