Personal Responsibility

    In her valuable 2024 book, “Invisible Loss. Recognizing and Healing the Unacknowledged Heartbreak of Everyday Grief,” Christina Rasmussen guides us to consider our "baseline story of self - how our life story sounds and feels to us ... our past and who we are ... how we have been surviving our everyday life." 

    Most of us immediately resist doing any such thing, perhaps grumbling 'I'm just fine, thank you very much!' We may actually fail to see, or simply not be ready to deal with our wounds. Whichever the case, the vast majority of us mistakenly assume that it's better to deal with 'all that deep stuff' later, much later, never. Of the 119 folks I sent email reminders of my posts, only 50 or so look at them, and when the topic is really deep, the number drops to around 20.

    One might assume / hope that if there's anyone brave enough to take, as Joseph Campbell called it, 'the hero's journey' and face & grow from encountering their own demons, it would be monks who devote their whole lives to deep contemplation & prayer in monasteries. But legendary monk Thomas Merton told fellow monk James Finley otherwise:
    “... what I clearly remember and took to heart was the quiet assurance with which (Thomas Merton) said: ‘Once in a while you will find someone (in the monastery) with whom you can talk about (spiritual experiences). But they are hard to find. And when you are fortunate enough to find such a person it will be a temporary arrangement. For you will spend most of your life without such a person, which will be your solitude in which you will learn from God how to depend on God to guide you into ever deeper communion with God.’”
    James Finley. “The Healing Path. A Memoir and an Invitation.” Orbis, 2023. POWERFUL, VALUABLE - A REAL HERO'S JOURNEY

    When we ARE actually 'fine,' then usually we sleep soundly, have pleasant dreams, wake up happy & energized to greet each new day our family & co-workers, we're quick to forgive, and excited to have the privilege of creatively nurturing our family, friends, humanity & Nature.
    That's NOT you? So actually it's more like you're "doing your best to get through the day" ie just trying to survive? Well isn't it time to look into that, and aim for a far better quality of life?

    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" Krishnamurti 

    YES, OUR SOCIETY IS SICK - AND - each one of us must take our own, separate hero's journey!

    “It is the perspective of the sufferer that determines whether a given experience perpetuates suffering or is a vehicle for awakening.” Mark Epstein MD

    “We suffer to the exact degree that we resist having our eyes & hearts opened.” Adyashanti

    In this imho excellent interview, psychiatrist / researcher / author Iain McGilchrist provides a psychiatric evaluation of our present culture as a whole AND our personal responsibility to think & behave WISELY :

    “I would think this patient who comes to me was very anxious, unsatisfied, depressed in fact, overstimulated, over-involved with his or her own inner life and not enough with a more general vision of life. I would think there was a sort of problem, not necessarily an innate problem with narcissism, but that was part of the picture. And at another level, I would say that they were – as I believe we all are now – and this helps to explain why we’re so unhappy, we’re taking onboard a vision of ourselves and of the world which is so far amiss, and so far short of the reality of who we are, that it is not surprising that we feel unfulfilled, frustrated, depressed & rudderless, as though there is no point in things. So I would see this anxious, depressed patient as over-dependent on the left hemisphere’s thinking, and I would see them as, in a simple sense, somewhat narcissistic.
    I think it’s crucial to emphasize that people don’t hear it when you first meet them and tell them, ‘Well what you need to do is more of this or less of that.” And that’s because they’re not in a place to think like that, to see their problem in the form that you are seeing it. So it’s not just that it’s somehow wrong but I’ll buy it and go with it. It’s useless! So the analogy here is that people want me very often, and it’s a very understandable reaction, I paint a picture of the modern world in so many respects as a reflection of the triumph of left hemisphere thinking over far more subtle right hemisphere thinking. (Left hemisphere thinking is) black & white, cut & dried, either or, categorical, abstracted, theoretical, but not actually in that place where it’s lived experience. And they want me to give them some answers, and that’s very understandable, because with left hemisphere thinking, one of the problems is that you see everything as a series of problems that must have solutions.
    But I think that instead of thinking in this problem-solution way, which has not worked. I’m not saying, ‘I don’t think it’s the best way to approach things – this individual problem, individual solution way.’ I’m saying, ‘It is not working, it has not worked, it never will work!’ Because it purports, that what it deals with, as the left hemisphere always does deal with, is an immediate isolated question or problem – it’s the one that helps us get stuff in a situation quickly.

    But what we are always dealing with, with human society and looking at the complexity of the natural world, and even more of the whole of the Earth, we are looking at a complex system in which there isn’t a simple cause & effect chain going on. There are many causes for every effect, and they interact with one another, and you won’t get anywhere by simply applying a simple solution. And that’s what people are longing for, ‘If only I knew, I could do this, and everything will be all right.’ 

    But I could waste your time and mine by saying, ‘Do this,’ but it won’t make everything all right, because we need to think at a bigger, broader, deeper level. We need to think in terms of complexity and I’m using that term in a technical sense that most people nowadays have heard about – complex systems and not just complicated systems like there’s quite a lot to them, it’s that they act in a different way from a complicated mechanism like a jumbo jet aircraft engine. So they require a different kind of approach, a systemic approach in which one’s looking more wisely for a shift of perspective.
    And I think what people need is exactly what they get when they enter into therapy. They get an ‘Aha’ moment. And my problem as a very naïve young psychiatrist was being able to see the solution in outline, but not allowing them to get the ‘Aha’ moment in which they see something different. And it may actually be the same set of circumstances, just seen from a quite different point of view. It’s like that illustration of the Duck Rabbit, you keep looking at it and thinking it’s a duck, but hey, it’s actually a rabbit. So it’s that kind of change.  

    In thinking about this, I’m rather tentative about bringing such a thing into the discussion here, because it might sound inappropriate or grand or something, but the distinction it occurred to me, is very much like the one described where in the gospel of St. Matthew, the Pharisees come to Jesus. You know the Pharisees were very concerned with rules & procedures and legalistic details. And they said to him, ‘Which of the laws is the most important law?’ So, it’s almost like asking, ‘Which is the one that I really must obey?’
    And Jesus said I think, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy might. And the second commandment is like that. It is love thy neighbor as thyself. On this, he said, on this hangs all the law and the prophets.
    In other words, our tendency is to get things back to front, to think the rules, the procedures, the things we do, are the important things, but it is our disposition*** that matters, and from that comes, on that hangs, all the law and the prophets.
(*** our inherent qualities of mind, character, spirit - how we relate to everyone & everything)
    Now what I’ve struggled to get across and I keep on trying to find a better way of putting this, because people think, ‘On well that’s all very well, but I want something concrete to do now.’ What I’m trying to say is that simply doesn’t work, and lots of problems we have now, are actually due to previous attempts to solve a different problem, and they’ve left us worse off than we were.
    So what we need to do is to change the way in which we think. It’s about the how, not about the what. And that incidentally is another hemispheric distinction. The left is interested in things, objects. The right is in the way in which something is done, because apparently, in the abstract, if you do the same thing or say the same thing, but with a different heart, a different intention, it changes it completely.”
    Iain McGilchrist “Why Contemplation & Wonder Are Essential for the Future of Humanity” - TGS 165 WONDER-FULL INTERVIEW:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F838KOrQrRg

 

Fear to Love

    Krishnamurti said, "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." It is indeed sad, stressful, disgusting and terrifying that a 'crime boss' is ruling, at his whim, over the most powerful military & financial gang in the world. Many around the world must surely be amazed at the psycho-social-spiritual level of a nation that would not once, but twice elect such a leader.

    “Worryin' is just prayin' backwards."    David Chethlehe Paladin

    Fortunately, a proportion of us also intuitively understand that there is ultimately only one real force or form of energy, and that is love. Like darkness is the lack of light, fear is the lack of love.
    There is an old Jewish legend that every generation has 36 saints (lamedvavnikim) on whose piety the fate of the world depends. By now, our world must surely have millions of awakening evolved human beings!

    So when we witness consistently irrational, heartless, uncivilized behavior, it is best for us & everyone else to consider, 'What if this perpetrator were my only child? How would I want them to be treated?' Not beaten or murdered. We'd certainly want them to be arrested & securely restrained, and ideally, if at all possible, rehabilitated to become as functional as possible, & if possible, safely re-introduced into a decent, law-abiding society.

“If this world is to be healed through human efforts,

I am convinced it will be by ordinary people

whose love for life is even greater than their fear.”

Joanna Macy

 

    Poetry, along with other arts, has the wonderful potential to connect us with our heart, right-hemisphere, body, the now, others, Nature and the Divine.

 

When she was a garden spider
Terry Ofner

and she hovered improbably above the patio
on that autumn morning, she caught me
with a filament across the brow.

Now, here comes the longest night.
People gather around solstice fires
as sparks drift into whatever comes next.

Angels, too, must have a ritual for this,
the moment of perfect imbalance
when the dark is collected in one place.

They must lean into it, their weightlessness
floating us through gravity’s fingers.
For me, I need a face. One I can recognize.

Take this photograph of my aunt Claudia
who died in childbirth years before I was born.
How do you know what’s no longer there?

Or take the field mouse that nibbled on a seed
under the feeder that late November evening.
A blink of owl-white and it was gone.

What we don’t know comes out of nowhere,
takes us up to the other side of doubt.
She’s gone, but traces of her remain.

A dun-shaded egg sac tucked in a corner
out of sight, full of now and hereafter.
Or light. Or wings.

Or that which floats or falls
when let go into our cousin night.


Winner of the Thomas Merton Grand Prize in the annual Poetry of the Sacred Contest www.centerforinterfaithrelations.org published by Parabola, Winter 2024-2025 www.parabola.org

Each individual's Loving Zest for Life is the Real Power

Love and Live!

    “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” John W. Gardner  

    We are, as Bruce Cockburn sang, "lovers in a dangerous time." We anxiously twitch to echos of the worn out phrase, "It's Do or Die!" in far too many, far too popular blow-em-up action movies, in our own tortured imaginations, and even in the reality of war-torn lands.
    Most of us have almost forgotten our true nature, which is always gently whispering encouragement, "Love and Live!"

“And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts;
a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky,
and in the mind of man; a motion and a spirit that impels
all thinking things, all objects of thought,
and rolls through all things.” William Wordsworth 

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.” William Wordsworth

    “How can an Ego that is lost & entangled … find its way out and recover the right relationship to the Self (Universal Consciousness, Ultimate Reality)? The answer is this: since the Ego has become lost through forgetfulness & fear, it can find its way home through the opposite of these two: mindfulness & trust. In its innermost heart, the Ego never fully forgets the Self – the puppeteer – but its memory is dulled, as in sleep. The Ego can be aroused from that sleep and return home to the Self – becoming ‘I myself’ again, like Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
    It is important to remember that the Ego is not a third entity in addition to the I and the Self. The Ego always remains the I, but it is an I all shriveled up, because it lacks the expansive awareness of the Self that unites it with every other I.”    David Steindl-Rast. “You Are Here. Keywords for Life Explorers.” Orbis, 2023. EXCELLENT, PROFOUND & PRACTICAL!

    Iain McGilchrist's 2021 two-volume book, "The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" covers in masterful detail, how we deal with reality in two very different, complementary ways: left-hemispheric dominance (essentially serving the "Ego") and right-hemispheric dominance, with an appropriately subordinate supportive role for the left hemisphere, (essentially serving the "Self").

    “I found out from robots the most crucial rule of all for living. Human minds are constantly being thrown off the track by complications. The picture is rarely clear. We are told everything has buddhanature (Divine Nature), and we try to act accordingly. But then we discover that someone we know has done something perfectly execrable (dreadful, appalling), and we begin to doubt. ‘How,’ we ask ourselves, ‘could anybody who would do an evil thing like that have the Buddha (Divine) inside him?’ We feel that our trust has been betrayed, and we resent the person even more.
    But robots are simpler than people. So are mountains and rivers and plants and animals and insects. Suppose these less complicated creatures begin to cause us difficulty. In that case, we have no trouble seeing that the fundamental cause is our failure to function in accordance with the principles of the universe. The machines, the mountains, the rivers, the plants, the animals, the insects all tell us that we, filled from head to toe with the buddhanature (Divine Nature), have nevertheless not succeeded in being what we ought to be.
    When we forget to respect the buddhanature in the wind and the water, typhoons and floods inform us of our lapse and show us in no uncertain terms how we have not lived up to the buddhanature within ourselves. When we forget the buddhanature in automobiles and other machines we have created, a warning comes to us in the form of accidents or pollution. Everything in the universe constantly tells us that the way to perfect our buddhanature is to respect the buddhanature in other things & people.”
    Masahiro Mori. “Does a Robot Have Buddhanature? A Leading Figure in the Field of Robotics Investigates.” Tricycle March 21, 2023.

    “All that we behold is full of blessings.” William Wordsworth

    When we sit and meditate, the Ego does its best to retain control by chattering on, the same circular "story of me" we endure day in and day out.
    Mercifully by relaxing, remaining still, and listening deeply to the silence, we periodically return home, disappearing in Mystery. Each time we return with a mind-heart a little bit more open & wiser.

"Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan

 

Want OR Need?

     AS we become increasingly able to sense, and thus 'step back' from impulsive behaviours - when this stepping back is our spiritual practice - we'll begin to see when what we're about to do, has little or no bearing on what actually needs to be done for our own & often others' immediate & long-term benefit. Impulsive wants include: checking our digital devices MANY times a day - including the most inappropriate occasions; 'anxiety eating' - I know this one well; rearranging furniture in one's room, immediately before exams - I've done this more than once!
    Our conditioned, compulsive busyness is a type of bypassing - futile attempts to escape psycho-social dysfunction - and/or - avoiding the call to spiritual maturation, through activities that - under normal contexts - have survival benefits. But if we become serious about this practice, then choice gaps become increasingly regular & obvious, and increasingly we'll choose wisely, realizing & focusing on what we actually need, AND gain freedom from our past negative conditioning that drives us toward wants. 

    That loaded, triggering word, 'spiritual' keeps popping up! But if we're able to set aside 'exclusivist' rhetoric (HIGHLY recommend: Rami Shapiro. “Holy Rascals. Advice for Spiritual Revolutionaries.” Sounds True, 2017), then we can handle David Rosmarin's definition: “Spirituality involves any way at all, of relating to that which is perceived to be sacred, or set apart from the physical world, something metaphysical, something greater than just the mechanics.” If we're blessed with the bandwidth to handle this inclusive definition of spirituality, we might possibly remember (HIGHLY recommend: Tobin Hart. “The Secret Spiritual World of Children: The Breakthrough Discovery that Profoundly Alters our Conventional View of Children’s Mystical Experiences.” New World Library, 2003), or at least sense, how we're all "spiritual beings having a human experience."

    “Spiritual aspirants can be broadly classified into four psychological types: the predominantly emotional (The Path of Love: Bhakti Yoga), the predominantly intellectual (The Path of Knowledge: Jnana Yoga), the physically active (The Path of Work: Karma Yoga), and the meditative (The Path of Meditation: Raja Yoga). There are four primary yogas designated to ‘fit’ each psychological type.
    ... these categories are not airtight compartments. Indeed, it would be psychologically disastrous for anyone to be completely emotional, completely intellectual, completely active or completely meditative. Each yoga blends into the next; each yoga balances & strengthens the others.” The Four Yogas http://web.csulb.edu/~wweinste/yogas.html

    “Too often, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, & the human tendency to put ourselves at the center.” Richard Rohr

 

     So our 'human limitations' may have us shut down & run for the hills simply from reading the word 'spiritual,' 'psychological,' or 'yoga,' - or even 'Richard Rohr,' because "he's a Catholic!" - OR - because "he's no Christian! - sounds just like one of them Buddhists!!"
    Even those who earnestly travel a spiritual path might be totally confused by an equally earnest traveler with a very different 'psychological type' eg between a strongly intellectual type and a strongly emotional type. These two may well speak equally passionately, YET very differently of their experience, and perhaps also behave somewhat differently. So there is tremendous need for humility & an open mind-heart - both of which appear to be held up in container ships just offshore.

    "wisdom doesn’t come from building clever structures or thinking things up. It comes from being ground down, because the only way to get to the truth is to let yourself be cracked open so that the truth can get to you.” Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021.

 

    “All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.” Adyashanti 

    “Bringing order to clutter, I begin to see, is ... about balancing the twin poles of spiritual life: cherishing life & holding it sacred, while knowing that it will pass away. It’s about learning to care for the things & people that are precious to me — and, when it’s time, freely letting them go.”    Anne Cushman

“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit
more powerful than any darkness we may encounter.
We sometimes lose sight of this force
when there is suffering, too much pain.
Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through
the lives of ordinary people who hear a call
and answer in extraordinary ways.”
Mother Theresa

 

 

Let the Love-Light Guide

      How often have we seen creative ideas for solving serious problems get quickly shot down with, "Well, I HATE to be the devil's advocate, BUT ..."? This can come from someone who's seen this idea not succeed. However, far too often it's a clash between those who've given up, and those who can see a bright future & have the faith & energy to achieve it - a clash between dark, defeatist "deficit-framing" & creative, nurturing "asset-framing."
      There are lots of reasons for cynicism, depression, hopelessness & nihilism:
      Our evolutionary instinct is to far more vividly remember negative events than positive ones ("negativity bias"). This helped animals survive visits to water holes, but for today's humans, it probably causes far more harm than good, by energizing many of our irrational fears & phobias.
      Trauma is so widespread, psychologists estimate that "94% of us, most of the time, are driven by the negative motivations of fear, greed/craving, anger, & self-assertion; such negative motivations lead to negative & destructive behavior." Danah Zohar
      The dominant, though mostly unconscious worldview today, of "Materialist or Reductionist Science, has (MISTAKENLY) concluded that we are the only sentient beings in an inanimate universe that is without life, meaning, purpose, direction or intelligence. This bleak ‘philosophy’ has taken on the power & absolutism of an ideology.” Anne Baring
      Then we add the fact that the world is in the midst of multiple huge crises: climate change, air-water-food-land pollution, war & nuclear weapons, racism, sexism, wealth hoarding, millions of refugees on the move, rising sea levels. 

     Our global crises DEMAND that we abandon defeatist, dead-end attitudes like "deficit-framing", and bravely, energetically & optimistically chart a new course towards a wise, sustainable life. 

     “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right,” Henry Ford

     Asset-Framing is a narrative model that prioritizes our own & others' assets & aspirations over our challenges & deficits, and invests in people to benefit society. "Trabian Shorters, the creator of the non-profit social impact network BMe Community states 'Narrative tells us which facts to even credit, which facts to ignore, which things are real, which things are false, narrative literally tells you who you are, it tells you who matters, where you should go and where you should not go. Narrative is really the key to how we frame our lives.'" Mick Krasner https://mindfulpracticeinmedicine.com/aspirations-an-inspiring-focus-for-our-practice/  .

      Most of us have some memory of our common primordial Source, but the duality & adversarial nature of our consensual reality veils us from the Light. Some of us sadly choose to remain stuck in total darkness, at least for this lifetime.
     But darkness need not be feared. It is not an actual entity.
     Darkness is simply not remembering what's most real - Light.

     "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
      Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
      It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us."     Marianne Williamson

     We CAN "raise our motivations to the higher ones of exploration, cooperation, self- & situational-mastery, creativity, & service.” Danah Zohar https://spirituality.ucla.edu/docs/newsletters/5/Issue_5/Zohar_Final.pdf Those of us trapped in

     Let's end our tendency to feel hopeless, meaningless, drained & dark! We know this causes nothing but hopelessness, meaninglessness, listlessness & darkness.
     No matter how dark things may get, no matter how low the odds for success appear, IF our goal is NOBLE, we NATURALLY SUCCEED - merging our WISE LOVING INEXHAUSTIBLE energy with the LIGHT. We cannot imagine what our world WILL be like WHEN we realize our UNLIMITED CAPACITY to hold ourselves, others & the entire universe in safety & unconditional love. This imho pivotally important, intelligently mind-heart-expanding book helps give us the confidence to succeed: Paul Levy. “Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality.” SelectBooks, 2018.
     We ALWAYS CO-CREATE our reality, be it light OR dark! We've wandered in darkness for too long. We must NOW intentionally seek the Light!

     “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
     What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
     And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” Howard Zinn PhD

If I stumble, will I fall?
If I fall, I'll tuck and roll
Close my eyes and let the love-light guide me home
Let the love-light guide me home
Let the love-light guide me home       "Skin and Bones" by Cage The Elephant 

I am that living fiery essence of the divine substance
that flows in the beauty of the fields.
I shine on the water;
I burn in the sun and moon and the stars.
The mysterious force of the invisible world is mine.
I sustain the breath of all living beings.
I breathe in the grass and in the flowers;
and when the waters flow like living things, it is I . . .
I am the force that lies hidden in the winds;
they take their source from me,
as a man may move because he breathes;
fire burns by my blast.
All these live because I am in them and am their life.
I am Wisdom.
The blaring thunder of the Word
by which all things were made is mine.
I permeate all things that they may not die;
I am life.                                                                 Hildegard of Bingen

Art by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com

Choosing Light or Dark?

     At birth, and until we're around one & a half or two years of age, we feel at one with everyone & everything around us, perfectly loved, perfectly at home, perfect: http://www.johnlovas.com/2022/01/bouncing-into-graceland.html I suspect that most of us, at least vaguely remember this wondrously perfect direct experience, have no words to express it, but try desperately to recapture it for the rest of our life. The result is an almost universal sense of 'lack': http://www.johnlovas.com/2019/05/our-sense-of-lack.html .
     Artists, those with addiction disorders, perfectionists, and perhaps most successfully, mystics are drawn towards the tantalizing perfect love that's almost within reach. Brief as well as more prolonged re-connection, re-membering of this perfect love (a "heart opening") occurs in mystical experiences: awakenings, near-death experiences (NDEs), "trips" on entheogens, post-traumatic growth experiences, etc. Even listening to people recount their NDE can help us to remember our own direct experience of having been loved unconditionally, and thus can be a profoundly meaningful, healing experience. I invite you to immerse yourself in these profound, transformative experiences:

Daniel Giroux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60BBp1Tl8Gw

Tricia Barker: https://batgap.com/tricia-barker/

Jose Hernandez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiOHQh-orH4

David Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiGqrkCMft0

Robin Landsong: https://batgap.com/robin-landsong/

NDE overview, by NDE-researcher Jeffrey Long MD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNRZzmNANIk

     Of course, we all know people who respond to this powerful calling by turning away from perfect love, denying its existence, and fully committing to fear, meaninglessness, materialism, cynicism, bitterness, anger & hatred. Here's the powerful NDE of a man who pushed this approach to the max, and how that worked out:

Howard Storm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxq6aoo5udA

     We can choose to be the source of love, nurturing everyone & everything - OR - to take all we can away from everyone & everything. This choice between being an evolved human being or a narcissist is always ours, moment-by-moment, with very different effects on everyone.
     EVERYTHING depends on this choice, and clearly, we can all be choosing MORE WISELY!

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love              Leonard Cohen