FINDING MYSELF: Another of Life’s Conundrums?

FINDING MYSELF: Another of Life’s Conundrums?

“Who am I”  Or  rather: “What  is  ‘I’?” 
What is this thing I call “I”?  What is this thing I call self?  You mean you understood everything else in the world and you didn’t understand this?  You mean you understood astronomy and black holes and quasars and you picked up computer science, and you don’t know who you are?  .  You mean you understood  what Jesus Christ is and you don’t know  who you are?  How do you know that you have understood Jesus Christ?  Who is the person doing the understanding?  Find that out first.  That’s the foundation of everything, isn’t it? 

But what I’d like to stress on now is self-observaton. Or else you are going to be influenced by forces within you of which you have no awareness at all.  .  Again and again we come across people who aren’t there at all. Their, husband, wife, daddy is there, their mommy is there, but they’re not there.  They never were there.  “I live now, not I, but my daddy lives in me.”  Well, that’s absolutely, literally true.  I could ask, “Now, this sentence, does it come from Daddy, Mommy, Grandma, Grandpa, whom”

Who’s living in you?  It’s pretty horrifying when you come to know that.  You thiink you are free, but there probably  isn’t a gesture, thought, emotion, attitude or a belief in you that is’nt  coming from someone else.  Isn’t that horrible?  You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really?  This thing you call “I” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of our conditioning and programming.

That’s painful.  In fact, when we’re beginning to awaken, we experience a great deal of pain.  It’s painful  to see our illusions being shattered.  Everything that we thought we had built up crumbles, and that’s painful.  That’s what repentance is all about;  that’s what waking up is all about.  How about being aware, if your eyes are open, of the color of the walls and the material they’re made of ?  How about being aware of faces around you and the reaction you have ? Because you have a reaction whether you’re aware of it or not.  And it probably isn’t your reaction. but one you were conditioned to have.

Say to yourself, “I’m in this room.”  It’s as if you were outside yourself looking at yourself.  Notice a slightly different feeling than if you were looking at things in the room.   “Who is this person who is doing the looking?”  I am looking at me.  What’s  “I”?  What’s “me”?  If you find yourself condemning yourself or approving yourself, don’t stop the condemnation and don’t stop the judgment or approval, just watch it.  Don’t say, “Oh, we were told not to do this.”  Just observe what’s going on.  As I said to you before, self-observation means watching—observing whatever is going on in you and around you as if it were happening to someone else. Would you write down on a piece of paper a brief way you’d describe yourself, businessman, human being, teacher, anything. Impatient, competent, centered, lover, overly structured. This is the fruit of ‘I’ observing ‘me’ This is very interesting.

First we begin with an awareness of things, then an awareness of thoughts, and finally the awareness of the thinker. Can the thinker know him/nerself? Can the knife cut itself or the tooth  bite itself? Can the eye see itself, can the ‘I’ know itself? Yes it can, ‘I’ can because ‘I Am’- Blasphemy? Think about it. ‘I’ am none of the labels, labels apply to ‘me’. When ‘I’ does not identify with, money, name, fame, success, failure, or any quality ‘I’ is never threatened. It can be very active, but never threatned. Think of anything that caused, causes you pain,anxiety,or  worry. First you’ll pick up a desire, second will be an identification. You have somehow said to yourself “the well being of ‘I’ is tied up with this desire”. All sufferig, is caused by my identifying myself with something whether it is inside or outside of me!.

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A Psalm of Life

A Psalm of Life

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

  “Life is but an empty dream!”

For the soul  is dead that slumbers,

  And things are not what they seem.

Life is real!  Life is earnest!

  And the grave is not its goal;

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”

  Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

  Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

  Finds us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

  And sour hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

  Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

  In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

  Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

  Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,-- act in the living Present!

  Heart within,  and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us 

  We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

  Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

  Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

  Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing

  Learn to labor and to wait.

This is an ode to all those who ‘wait patiently for the Lord to act’

Yesterday I received another one of ‘life’s bumps’. My first sale! Wow, that mail from Click Bank, I read over and over again, just to make sure I was seeing right. And it was.

My heartfelt thanks to all of you, the extended members of my family here in IBO. To all my wonderfl friends who, by their sharing, had helped me, knowingly or unknowingly,to persist without counting the costs. Just as the farmer scatters seed, and does’nt know how they sprout and grow, I did all that I could. Sometimes dejected, not able to do more, sometimes anxious that is was so painfully slow.

I am aware that there are quite a few of you out there waiting for your ‘big break’. If you are a newbie like me, with two left hands for the keyboard, and a mouse that would sometimes have a will of its own, not to ‘click’ left or the right or to scroll ‘in the middle’. I want to encourage you, ‘never give up’, 'He who called you is faithful, because He cannot be unfaithful to Himself’. And you will see, ‘the Lords goodness in this present day,’ and ‘with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation’. Amen and amen.

Have a blessed day

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Some Expert Help Desk Advice

If I can just say one thing.....before calling for help.

**Keep it simpple**

**Restart before calling the helpdesk.'**

**Backup, Backup, Backup**

**Its a fact of life:Windows update is your friend You need it.**

*8Get a good anti-virus solution. People are often confused about what protection they actually have.**

**Work out the difference between the left and right click on your mouse.**

Caller: "Can you assist me with my computer internet?"

Agent: "Can you close all windows and get back to the desktop"?

(Five minutes later the caller says he is back at the desktop)

Agent: "Can you see 'my computer' on your desktop now?"

Caller: "No"

Agent: "Can you close the window"?

Caller: "I have already closed the window, behind my computer."

Agent: "Can you click on the 'My Computer' icon on the screen?"

Caller: "How can I click on your computer?"!

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On Building an Individual Identity

On Building an Individual Identity

LIFE’S LITTLE ETIQUETTE CONUNDRUMS;

I am a divorced mother of two who’s getting remarried soon, and I’m unsure about my name change.  I could use my maiden name, take my fiance’s name, hyphenate my maiden name and my fiance’s name, or hyphenate his name with my first husband’s name.  Is it too weird to hyphenate my ex’s name with my new husband’s to have the same last name as my kids?

This is a thorny question faced by every divorced mom who remarries.  Nothing is “too weird” unless it is to you.  Keeping  your  kids’ last name is indeed a convenience when it comes to school or doctor appointments.  But identity trumps convenience.  Who are you?   A re yu Mrs. Maiden Name Hyphenated?  Are you Mrs Ex-Wife Crossed with Mrs New Wife?  Or Mrs All-New Wife?  You need to answer that and pick the name that best represents it.  As for your kids, I can assure you that children survive divorce, remarriage, and parental renaming (along with other twists and turns of life) as long as they feel loved.

The world's longest flower is quite the stinker.

The flower goes by the name Amorphophallus titanum or Titan arum but is commonly referred to as the Corpse flower as it gives off the smell of rotting flesh to attract pollinators.

The Corpse flower can reach over 12 feet in length and weigh up to 175 pounds when it blooms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk8kEMaRN3g

It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it stinks. We know it’s fascinated people for well over a hundred years but it’s probably been fascinating for many thousands of years before that. This plant is so rare and so exotic that every bloom makes headlines around the world and the only place to be sure to see a bloom from this mystifying beauty is at one of the many formal botanical gardens cultivating them. Many avid gardeners consider the sight a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, an event worthy of pilgrimage.

Don’t let it’s name fool you. The titan arum is a flower both exotic and beautiful. The problem is its fragrance. The intriguing flower’s not-so-pretty name comes from the fact that it stinks. It smells like rotting flesh.

One little stinky flower might not draw a lot of attention but the corpse flower is not a little flower. During its flowering phase, when it is most aromatic, the bloom can be more than eight feet (2.5 meters [m]) tall and ten feet (3 m) wide. That’s a pretty exotic statistic in and of itself but there’s so much more to this spectacular plant.

Am 'I' comfortable with 'me'?  Its easy if I am others oriented!

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THIS FRIENDSHIP DAY: Come, meet your best friend! Come home to You.

HOW HAPPINESS
HAPPENS: Come, meet your best friend! Come home to You.

There’s a lovely saying of Tranxu
the chinese sage:”When the archer shoots for no particular prize, he has all
his skills; When he shoots to win a brass buckle, he is already nervous; when
he shoots for gold, he goes blind, sees two targets, and is out of his mind.
His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares! He thinks more
of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains him of power.!

Is’nt that an image of what most
of us are? When we live for nothing we’re full of energy, relaxed, we don’t
care, it does’nt matter win or lose. Success, honor, become social conventions
– that’s human living. Awareness.

Come home to yourself.  Observe yourself.  Self-observation is such a delightful and
extraordinary thing.  After a while you
don’t have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to crumble, you
begin to know things that cannot be described.
It’s called happiness.  Everything
changes and you become addicted to awareness.

Step outside of yourself and look
at that depression, anxiety, worry..you don’t identify with it. You don’t do a
thing to make it go away, you’re perfectly willing to go on with your life while
it passes through you and disappears. If you havent experienced this you have
something to look forward to. And anxiety? There it comes and your not
troubled. How strange! you’re anxious but not troubled. Is’nt that a paradox?!

You can be happy in your
depression, anxiety, but you cannot have the wrong notion of happiness. Did you
think happiness was excitement or thrills? You’re thrilled, right, but your’re
just preparing the way for your next depression. Thrilled but the anxiety
follows right behind: How can I make this last? That’s not happiness. That’s Addiction.
Dont look down on the drug addicts and alcoholic’s maybe you’re just as
addicted. The first time I glimpsed at this ‘new’ world it was terrifying. I
understood what it meant to be alone, with ‘nowhere to rest your head’ to set
everyone free, and be free myself. To be special to no one and love everyone,
because love does that. The sun shines on the good and the bad alike, it rains
on the saint and sinner. Can the rose say: I will give my fragrance to the good
and not the bad people who smell me’. Or can the lamp say that I will give my
light to the good and withhold it from the bad people. These a images of love.

Its been there all along,
staring us in the face, in scriptures. We never cared to see it because we were
drowned in what our culture calls love with its love songs and poems. That is’nt
love, that’s possessiveness, desire, control. That’s manipulation, fear
anxiety, but not love. We were told that happiness is a smooth complexion, a
holiday resort. No it is’nt, but we’ve found subtle ways of making our
happiness depend on other things, both within and outside of us. ‘I refuse to
be happy until my neurosis goes.’ I’ve got news for you: you can be happy right
now with the neurosis, you want even better news? There’s only one reason why
you’re nt experiencing bliss, you’re focussing on wht you don’t have. Right now
you have everything you need to be in bliss. Jesus was talking horse sense to
lay people, starving people, poor people, He was giving them good news: Its
yours for the taking but who listens?

That’s what it is to watch
yourself.  No one can show you how to do
it, because he would be giving you a technique, he would be programming
you.  But watch yourself.  When you talk to someone, are you aware of it
or are you simply identifying with it.?
Later, when you had the time, did you study your experience and attempt
to understand it?  Where did it come
from?  What brought it on?  I don’t know of any other way to
awareness.  You only change what you
understand.  What you do not understand
and are not aware of, you repress.  You
don’t change.  But when you understand
it, it changes.

 I am sometimes asked, “Is this growing in
awareness a gradual thing, or it is a ‘whammo’ kind of thing?”  There are some lucky people who see this in a
flash.  They just become aware.  There are others who keep growing into it,
slowly, gradually, increasingly.  They
begin to see things.  Illusions drop
away, fantasies are peeled away, and they start to get in touch with
facts. 

If you’re lucky and the gods are
gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace (use any theological expression
you want), you might suddenly understand who “I” is, and you’ll never be the
same again, never.  Nothing will ever be
able to touch you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again.

"You are my son, today I have begotten you". "I have called you by name you are mine"

You will fear no one and you will
fear nothing.  Isn’t that
extraordinary?  

HAPPY FRIENDSHIP DAY.

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International Friendship Day

“Faithful friends are a
sturdy shelter, whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond
price, no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life saving
medicine, those who fear God will find them”(Sir 6:14-16)

“The wicked can have only
accomplices, the volutuous have companions in debauchery..princes have
courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends” Voltaire.

“There is no greater love
than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do
what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a master does’nt
confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything
that the father has told me” (Jn 15:13-15)

August 4^th is
International Friendship Day. It is not always easy to find good friens and it
can often take a lifetime to find one. A good criterion of an excellent and
faithful friend is the old adage: A friend in need is a friend indeed. A friend
is someone who ‘walks in when everyone else walks out.’ The three most
endearing qualities that I have found in true friends are, returning love for
hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting they are wrong.

Friendship is a golden chain,
made stronger with each day,

The links are forged of
memories of things we do and say,

The thoughtful things you say
and do, make up the links fo gold.,

That I will treasure through
the years and in my heart will hold.

Happy Friendship Day!  

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Effortless Change - Alive, Awake, Aware.

With malice towards none. 

A.S Neill, the author of ‘Summerhill’says the sign of a sick child is that he is always hovering around his parents; he is interested in persons. The healthy child has no interest in persons, he is interested in things. When a child is sure of his mother/fathers love he forgets his parents, he is interested in other things. He is curious and is looking to explore the world. Hovering around his parents means he’s insecure, maybe he does’nt get the freedom and assurance he needs, or is being threatened in many subtle ways.

 Addictions, approval, appreciation, attention. This is what society did to us when we were born. We were not allowed to enjoy the solid, nutritious food of life – work, play, fun, laughter, compay, simple pleasures of the mind and senses.So we were given a taste of various ‘drug’ addictions: approval, attention, success, making it to the top, prestige, getting your name in the news paper, power, being the boss. Things like being the captain of the team, leading the band etc; Having tasted these, we became addicted and now dread losing them. Terror at the prospect of failure or of making mistakes, of  the criticism. We became cravenly dependant on others and lost our freedom. Others now have the power to make us happy or miserable.

We crave our ‘drugs’, but as much as we hate the suffering this involves, we find ourselves completely helpless. Conciously or unconciously not a minute passes when we are not attuned to the reactions of others, marching to the beat of their drums. When we are ignored or disapproved of, we experience a loneliness so unbearable that we crawl back to people and beg for the comforting ‘drug’ of support, encouragement, reassurance. ‘Hell is other people’  said Satre. ‘How miserable is a body that depends on a body and how miserable is the soul that depends on these two’.- Gospel of Thomas

We’ve got to live up to expectations, in a state of dependency, we cannot ‘let our hair down’ we’re always on our best behaviour. To be without them brings agony, loneliness. We miss them. We have lost the capacity to see them as they are and to respond to them acurately, because our perception of them is clouded by our need for our ‘drugs’ We see them insofar as they are a support for getting our ‘drug’ or a threat to have our ‘drug’ removed.Through these eyes is how we’re always looking at people, will I get what I want from them? Or not. And if they are unable to support or are not a threat to my ‘drug’, I’m not interested in them. That’s a horrible thing to say, but I wonder if there’s anyone of whom this cannot be said.

Wake up! We need awareness, we need nourishment, good healthy nourishment. Lose your mind and come to your senses. Unfortunately people no longer enjoy, good food, good wine, good water, good reading, a good book, a good discussion or just thinking. It’s marvellous. But we’ve become addicted because we have forgotten the lovely things in life. So we’re going after bigger and greater artificial stimulants. “I took my stand in the midst of the world, and in the flesh I appeared to them I found them all drunk, and I did’nt find any of them thirsty. My soul ached for the children of humanity, because they are blind in their hearts and do not see. They came into the world empty, and they also seek to depart from the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk, when they shake off their wine they will change their ways.” – Gospel of Thomas.

We’re overworked, go, go, go. If we could simply enjoy life, and the simple pleasures of the senses, it will be amazing. Watch the animal, in its habitat it will never overeat or be overweight. It will eat only what it needs and will never eat or drink anything that is not good for its health. You’ll never see an animal smoking, or not exercising as much as it needs. Watch your cat. See how it relaxes and springs into action. We’ve lost that aliveness, suppleness the agility. We lost that. We are lost in our minds, in our ideas, and ideals, and so on. Always go, go, go. And we have this inner conflict that animals don’t have. When we enjoy something intensely, we need very little. People are so busy planning their holidays, take months planning it. They get there and they are anxious about their reservations for flying back. They are taking pictures that they will show us of the places that they have not seen but photographed. That’s modern life. Slow down, sit down and listen, taste, smell, hear, let your senses come alive. ‘Rain drops hopping up and down as their feet touched the hot pavement’. Listen, not to any one sound, try to hear them all, see it all! There’s an orchestra being played out before us.You’ll see miracles happen as your senses come unclogged, an extremely important step towards change.Visualize effortless change, is it possible, Asailboat with a mighty wind in its tail glides along effortlessly, all the boatman does is steer. That is the image of what happens when change comes through awareness, through understanding.

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