We so often want things to change…people to be kinder, our work to be more appreciated, our wait to be shorter. Alan Watts once commented that Blood behaves differently in a test tube than in your veins, showing that “it” and its “environment” are connected, are one. If you want to change to happen, YOU change. It starts and ends with you. If you have any control in this life, it’s over your own reaction to your environment. Being mutually…
You will never succeed at what you weren’t supposed to do in the first place…but you can’t fail at what you’re destined to become.
I don’t think many words are needed to add to this, and it can be interpreted in several ways. I’ve heard that squirrels hide so many nuts for the winter simply because they can’t remember where they hid most of them.
In this world we are always asking others to change. Circumstances to change. Life to change. We don’t realize that by asking the world to change, we are giving away our power. It’s like asking the mirror’s reflection to change. Change your position, and the opponent has to change…
When attacked, your first reaction is to retaliate. It feels like this would even the score, nullify the attack. However Hatred times two, is hatred 2X, not zero. Looking at the situation from a “medical” point of view, SOMETIMES you need chemotherapy, but that shouldn’t be your first response when you get the sniffles…
If the mind stays quiet, pliable, and non-attached to opinions, it can open up a wild, wondrous world, that was before, unseen…
Flow. We see it all around us; we see its effects in the mirror. A constant reminder that all things change, like it or not. We want to hold on, and arrest change, like capturing lightning in a water bucket. However once the flow is interrupted, it’s gone. You can’t have it… because you ARE it. Only by realizing you are the universe, the thinker AND the thought, you can let go of the need to hold on, because nothing…
This came from one of my friends, Rod Allen, and is perhaps the “cleanest” way to describe within the limits of language what the nature of reality and consciousness may be…I have said “we’re all hair on the same dog”, but I think Rod’s description is more accurate, and certainly more elegant. Thanks Rod!
Of course I am not advocating for an unhealthy lifestyle, because we’re going to lose the battle anyway (lighten up!). I am not saying “lay down your sword”, nor “give up the fight”. It is worth remembering though that we’re all just passing through. It is also worth remembering that in the passing, LEAVE YOUR MARK. You may lose the battle, but they will know you were here…
The thinking mind, with all of its noise, grows more ravenous, the more it is fed. This is not entirely bad; on occasion one has need for an administrative assistant, or even a guard dog. But don’t let it fool you into its illusion, for as clever as it may be at computation, it is even more clever at convincing you of the despair of the past, or the fear of the future. Both are illusion, and with rapt attention…