You close your eyes for the last time, as this life ends, as this dream evanesces and is gone to the keeping of memory. And you open your eyes in a new reality, awakened from the Earth dream, and loved ones bid you on.
How do you know that? he asks.
How indeed? I hardly know how to answer.
Well whoever said that I mean, how do they know that?
Oh but I said it.
Oh you said that?
Yes. And how do I know it? It’s a good question.
I suppose my guides told me, or maybe it was intuition. I just know.
The Daily Dalai: “World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.”
We do think, I do, of peace as the absence of violence. Given the immediate horrors of never-ending war, how else?
I display peace-oriented bumper stickers on my car. One says “Visualize World Peace.” It’s an old one, from the 60’s, vintage peace regalia. I’m convinced most people are unable to visualize world peace. When a state of being is defined by absence of an opposing state of being, what exactly is it? Most if not all people are unable to picture a world at peace. It makes no sense to them. It looks like weakness, vulnerability. An invitation for evil-doers to have their way with us.
Surely we can not be faulted for our short-range vision. We can’t see beyond the horror of it, which we daily face or turn away from. There is no blame in this. We are here. It is now. Too many babies grow up in war zones. Too many parents are lost to war. In survival mode, how visionary can we be? And who among us has experienced peace?
If we find some measure of peace within ourselves, we can project the possibility of peace outward into the world. We must put clothes on it, flesh it out, build it up, and we must give it voice.
Sharing what we have each individually learned about peace within our own often embattled psyches, let’s begin to fill in the details of our sketch.
In the absence of war, we shall find peace. But if it is merely the absence of war, it will return again to war. Put another way, if we still focus on war we will never create peace, only a temporary time of no-war punctuated by more war.
If peace is not just the opposite or absence of war, of what does it consist? Indeed what will we do when we are not at war?
What we do now is prepare for the next war. Futile.
Maybe we can get past war vs. peace to a place of integrity. Now that really would be something. Rather than resistance of war, which creates it, we can stand in wholeness before the mirror and honestly see who we are.
We are warlike. We are competitive for resources, jealous of possessions, suspicious of difference, and we are easily aroused to battle. In truth, we like battle.
Humanity is a confusing business. We are predator and prey. Both and neither. We follow our fears. Wherever they lead us.
HH is correct, compassion for others slows the impulse to slaughter, but it doesn’t extinguish it.
We engage in peacefulness as if it is a holiday. The serious business of survival ever awaits our renewed attention.
We must WAGE PEACE with as much vigor as we wage war. But how?
I think it begins when we stop believing war is necessary. And who can even begin that?
Can you?
Sometimes your best friend is Jimeny Cricket. Right now my friendly elf-guide is Self-Doubt. It requires humility, which requires honesty.
So if you don’t know when you are lying, there is work to be done. It is important to develop healthy self doubt as a basic life success skill.
Some people become disabled by self-doubt. This indicates a demanding little brat of an ego that tells you how pathetic you are whenever you dare question it.
Think about it.
The Daily Dalai: “A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections and rebukes evil is to be respected as if he reveals the secret of some hidden treasure.”
Wow, a utopian vision! HH invokes the ideal, the goal. Can we subscribe to it? I must say it seems far-fetched in this ego-driven nightmare we are living in. Who among us can honestly say they welcome criticism and correction?
During my working years, I had the job of auditing, assessing and assuring quality of staff performance for a state agency. I can’t recall a single instance of “happy the QA lady is here to correct my work.” Quite the contrary was the case.
Oh sure I learned how. The point is no one wanted to hear they had room to improve. Which is sad when you consider that everyone does.
So Holiness, we thank you for directing our attention to a clear measure of ego-attachment that we may re-commit to relinquishing same.
I’m afraid you have also underlined the distance yet to go.
In my personal life I have known many who burst into flame upon any suggestion of criticism. None of the other kind. Let us re-commit ourselves to become free from the shackles of ego. It has ever been our undoing.
Self importance is the great illusion of humanity. We’re so proud of ourselves. Men in suits proclaim our will.
Indeed.
My physical well being and my mood move together. It is possible to achieve a better mood briefly, but generally if I feel badly physically then I am also downhearted. Not self-pitying necessarily, but just down.
Is this a failure in my maturity? My spiritual development? Or is it my nature, and as such a veritable fact of life? Should I accept it or try to overcome the direct causal connection between my physical well being and my enjoyment of life? Do some people really dismantle this connection? Become impervious to physical pain? Mood-managers supreme! Nothing can dent their perfect happiness armor. Right. Who is that? Show me? I’m gonna have to call BS on that one.
I’ll tell you what I see all around me: I see suffering. Physical and emotional and spiritual suffering. Abundant suffering. Frowning and grimacing and trying to look expressionless to hide their unhappiness.
Seriously, happy people smile. I smile when I’m happy. Don’t you?
It’s scary out here.
I always forget what wellness feels like, whenever I am distracted by some intense affliction. Like going through detox from pain meds. Now that energy is generating from within my body, my spirit is lifted. I would like to eliminate that cause-effect relationship.
I mean there has been quite a bit of affliction one way and another, and I am sure it is that way for many of us living on this planet today.
I’m a long way I guess from enlightened detachment. People say “be with the pain” etc. as if acceptance will do it. The best I’ve done with acceptance is being able to get through it. I would never go there voluntarily.
No. I really have looked around, and the thing that has always worked best for me has been self-talk.
Rich and I were talking about it this morning. How the body justs obeys whatever you say, likely whatever you think too! So if I say woe is me my body gets sad, chemically, actually and immediately.
When I am exhausted if I have further to go, I say or think, but saying out loud is more powerful, “I am strong.” My body instantly jumps up. Just like my dog. When I talk to him he jumps up. Okay.
So I think I will work on this method for a while. Maybe go further into Louie Hay’s work on affirmations and visualizations.
If we don’t have to argue with our bodies, just discipline them, okay train the body and be loving with it, emotionally gentle. Remember you don’t want your body in fight or flight. Ugh!
Well be all that as it may, I did forget what wellness feels like. Perhaps it has been too long.
Namaste from wellness land.
A week ago on 5/18 I took the tiny 12 mcg Fentanyl patch off of my arm and that as they say was that. Five months before it was a 100 mcg patch. I cut it in half monthly more or less until I got painfully down to 12 mcg/hr. Then I just pulled it off. I was so done with the whole process.
I stopped smoking the same way. Just took the open pack out of my purse and threw it away. Done.
Sound easy?
It’s not easy. Perhaps easy is not the decisive issue in the decision to quit smoking or to quit using narcotic pain meds. If you’re looking for easy, well get a nicotine patch or get to a methodone clinic. Cold turkey, as it is called and I don’t know why, is not easy. It’s hard.
But it is swift and certain, if difficult. Difficulty does nothing for my ego, which would prefer both to stay on opiates and to smoke cigarettes, were it at all feasible. The feasibility studies are all in, so denial is not possible. Smoking tobacco and taking opiates daily will shorten your life in nasty ways. The party is brief, the results are fatal.
As I have said before, I’m too nosey to die before I must. I want to see what comes next. I want to see my grandchildren grow up, maybe hold their babies. There’s a lot I have a continuing taste for in life. I want to frolic on the beach, in a mountain meadow … well there is too much to tell. I just want to live a while longer.
And then there is a spiritual motivation as well. I have long been troubled by how the drugs interfere and dull me psychically. I could be more help to others if I weren’t dulled down.
But whatever reasons I may enumerate at any moment, bottom line is I did this because it was necessary, not because I prefer being drug-free. I like drugs. But I like being wide awake more.
So I chose life, because I like life more.
Sleep came after 3 this morning so I was glad to find I’d slept 8 hrs. But 11 is hella late to be under the covers. Still … If I stay still I can ignore the pain in my low back. But staying still isn’t an option. My body craves movement. And now even Spike has left the bed. Add to that Rich and Tré will be here soon. Best just push through the pain. Ha!
There has always been a center in me where something more enduring abides. The watcher, of course, the quiet unperturbed observer. So not only has it never been upset, it also has never been sick. I like this part of me better all the time.
The boys are delayed so Tré can finish his movie. I’m glad gives me more time to slowly unwind myself from the past six days of being narcotic-free. Just finally last evening I found a non-narcotic pain remedy that works. I need to take some right now.
Okay. Taking medicine has become an important part of life lately. But having it work, now that is really something.
Last night I stopped for some Arnica pellets and also got a formula for leg cramps, which routinely keep me from getting to sleep.
When the pain disappeared I was shocked. And of course delighted. I took more than the recommended dose. Just now I took the recommended dose to see if/how that works.
I really am astonished that the homeopathy worked by far the best of anything I tried for the body pains of withdrawal from narcotic pain meds. How many unfortunate people, like me believe that only opiates can get rid of their chronic pain?
I know I’m weird, but I’m not so weird that I would be the only person who had that idea.
We live entirely within the grip of the mainstream media. Talk about one-stop-shopping! You get all your needs met on the screen, on the projection screen, where you experience sports events as a live viewer, teleported as it were, to the upper deck at the arena, and from there you can use your bionic eyes to zoom in or even replay the action.
Well speaking for myself, live is still better. But virtual, while not entirely real is really close. Of course, we were mesmerized. And look at us go mobile! We can hardly wait for the next technology. But being physically present has dimensions that seeing and hearing remotely just can’t begin to compete with.
Let’s be honest, physical enjoyment is pretty amazing! And the thrill of catching a foul ball requires you to not only be there in the flesh, but also to bring your glove.
I’m in a better mood today. Acupuncture yesterday and homeopathy making a good combination.
The clerk at SuperSup said the flower remedies heal emotional aspects of injury/illness. So she sold me a pricy tube of lotion for my knee. And she looked right at my right shoulder and said to use it for any other places I’ve been cut on. Right. All night I thought about what she said.
The flowers heal emotions. What about sound? Healing sound. I know it is healing. But in which ways? I know sound works with the energy system. Physical for sure. But not the way a cup of tea can aid digestion. The energy that cycles through the physical and animates it. It is physical in that it exists and can be measured as to intensity, color and temperature at the minimum. Without instruments.
Sound and aroma. Don’t leave them out of your healing. Including them will make your efforts more holistic and I gotta think that’s a good thing!
Namaste from detox land.
stillwalkn 