Spacious Sky Holds Passing Clouds Lightly

     "Security is mostly a superstition, it does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men (and women) as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all!" Helen Keller

     "Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor." Marianne Williamson

      “Compulsive concern with ‘I, me, and mine’ isn’t the same as loving ourselves … Loving ourselves points us to capacities of resilience, compassion, and understanding within that are simply part of being human.” Sharon Salzberg

     "Sometimes you have to let go of the picture of what you thought it would be like and learn to find joy in the story you are actually living." Rachel Marie Martin

     "You need nothing more than the experience you are having right now. It is enough. It is plenty. It is perfect just as it is. It was designed for you, given to you for your experience. All you have to do, and all you have ever had to do is accept this gift. Take it and let it in. Let yourself experience the present moment just as it is. It doesn't get any better than this. This is the simple truth the ego refuses to accept, and it will suffer as long as that is the case." Gina Lake  

     "Mindfulness does not reject experience. It lets experience be the teacher. With mindfulness, we can enter the difficulties in our life and find healing and freedom."
                                                                                                                                            Jack Kornfield  

     "You are the sky. Everything else — it’s just the weather." Pema Chödrön 

AwakeningArtsAcademy.com

Unconditional Love

     “… scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units. Science is based on reproducibility & manufactured objectivity. 
     As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter & energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature of human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable.
    Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.”
       Paul Kalanithi MD. “When Breath Becomes Air.” Random House, 2016.
 
      "The essential dynamic of the shadow patriarch (dark side of male energy), whether operating within a man or woman, is the unrelenting drive to power, dominance, and control. In many ways this attempts to compensate for the loss of connection, love, & belonging, and ultimately for the loss of an ability to feel intimacy with life.” Thanissara

     “It’s great if we become a super cool meditator ... but if the heart isn’t free from suffering – or at least moving in that direction – we may have missed the point. In other words, we need to reflect on the results. What are the effects of meditation practices in my life? Are wholesome qualities of heart increasing – like generosity, kindness, & wisdom? Are unwholesome ones – greed, hatred, & delusion – decreasing?" Kittisaro

     “Love is the bridge
      between you and everything.” Rumi

     “If you judge people (* including yourself *), you have no time to love them.” Mother Teresa
 
     “The love & attention you always thought
      you wanted from someone else,
      is the love and attention
      you first need to give to yourself.” Bryant McGill 

     “It’s not a luxury to feel loved and cared for — it’s what makes us emotionally secure. If it didn’t happen when we were children, meditation can help us develop a secure emotional base now.
     … connecting with our true nature in order to gradually make our minds freer is a real possibility. And that same capacity for attunement translates into more genuine connections.” Tara Bennett-Goleman PhD

     “Your task is not to seek for love,
      but merely to seek & find all of the barriers
      within yourself that you have built against it.” Helen Schueman

“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 Teresa

www.buddhadoodles.com

Are You Sure?

     "Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.” Martin Buber 


When You Are Old
W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, 
And nodding by the fire, take down this book, 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false or true, 
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, 
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead 
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.



     “If you want a barometer for progress in practice, look at how skillful you are at holding ‘not sure’. It’s very different from what most spiritual disciplines teach. Exercise the skill of being mindfully ‘not sure’, apply it and try it out. Remember this is not just another technique or position we grasp in our search for security. Really try it out in your formal practice and in daily life. Start to experiment with the result of restraining the mind’s tendency to grasp at wanting to be sure.” Ajahn Munindo 


     "Certainty": http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/certainty.html

          "In the Forest" watercolour on rice paper by Krista Hasson   http://fogforestgallery.ca

Danger Signals

     Immediately from one or a few obvious cause(s), or more gradually from unknown numbers of straws on the camel's back, we're regularly bombarded by many, many danger signals.
     'Danger' sounds acute, even life-threatening. But as social creatures, we sense danger even when someone we consider important, isn't as friendly towards us as usual. So the innumerable variables in life, coupled with our 'negativity bias' conspire to more or less constantly keep us on edge! And the greater our history of trauma, the more exaggerated the alarm bells & our responses. One can sustain major trauma without ever having experienced combat or sexual abuse.
      “By far the most important predictor of how well (people) coped with life’s inevitable disappointments was the level of security established with their primary caregiver during the first two years of life.”
     Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. 

     So we can see that we should be gentle & understanding with our own & others' odd behavior. We're all, to some degree, scared, needy kids who just want to be safe, secure, loved & happy. Our behavior hints at how patient (to desperate) we are to get there, as well as how healthy (to dysfunctional) our idea of "there" happens to be. All of us are always doing our best, no matter how that may appear to others - and even to ourselves when we look back (with dismay & gratitude for the great tolerance we received) later!
     But identifying with our level of dysfunction is unsatisfactory - intentional wallowing simply won't do. We must tirelessly dig ourselves out of this hole. We can learn to quickly & easily recognize the felt sense of false (ego) danger. There's a distinct difference between danger to our ego vs actual life. We must learn to identify this difference, because our quality of life definitely depends on skillfully managing these two vastly different dangers.

 The Space Between by Alice Mason   https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/AliceMasonArtist?ref=l2-shopheader-name

Trump's Revolution?

     "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."       John F. Kennedy

     14 million Trump supporters could potentially inflict a Cultural Revolution on the US. The rest of the world cannot escape the fallout.

     “… Inner Mongolia was not spared the excesses of the disastrous (Chinese) Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when the nation was on war footing, arrayed against domestic enemies of the state and international enemies of the nation, real and imagined. The ‘four olds’ (old thought, old culture, old customs, and old practices) were under attack, targeting, in particular, ideologically ‘backward’ members of superstitious** and conservative rural societies. When they weren’t working to bring down important political, military, and cultural figures, Red Guard factions spent their time tormenting ordinary citizens. Military organizational schemes replaced traditional tribal order, military terminology was in vogue, and military commanders, competent or not, were placed in charge of production activities. … it was an onerous time for people whose lives were centered on respecting the ways and superstitions** of their ancestors.”

       Jiang Rong. “Wolf Totem.” Penguin Books, 2004.


** superstition - the pejorative materialistic societies use for wisdom traditions, particularly Native Spirituality

Seeking Truth over the Illusion of Security

     “Let nothing come between you and the light.        Henry David Thoreau

     ... each person must free himself from prison – the prison of being a limited, corporeal, dying self.

     ... mystics don’t want to read religious wisdom; they want to be it."

       Huston Smith, Jeffery Paine. “Tales of Wonder. Adventures Chasing the Divine. An Autobiography.” HarperOne, NY, 2009.

Tuscan Rain

Attachment to People, Memories, Concepts, Theories, Dogmas ...

      "One of the basic tenets of Bowlby's attachment theory is interactions with significant others who are available & supportive in times of stress facilitate the formation of a sense of a "secure base," or ... felt security. This sense can be viewed as the cognitive-affective aspect of an interpersonal prototype or script. 

     Theoretically, the script includes something like the following if-then propositions: If I encounter an obstacle or become distressed, I can approach a significant other for help; he or she is likely to be available and supportive; I will experience relief and comfort as a result of proximity to this person; I can then return to other activities. 

     In Bowlby's terms, the sense of having a secure base provides an individual with a framework for maintaining well-being, formulating effective emotion-regulation devices, developing positive models of the self & others, and engaging in exploration & risk-taking activities.

     Although the sense of having a secure base may be formed during early interactions with primary caregivers, Bowlby contended that every meaningful interaction with significant others throughout life may affect a person's beliefs about others' availability & supportiveness. Moreover, although the sense of having a secure base may be quite general, it is also common for people to develop relationship-specific beliefs organized around actual experiences with a specific partner. These beliefs do not necessarily fit with the more general, chronic sense of having (or not having) a secure base. In fact, like every cognitive-affective representation, the sense of having a secure base can be contextually activated by actual or imagined encounters with available & responsive others, even among persons who have chronic doubts about their secure base." 
       Mikulincer M, Shaver PR. Attachment theory and intergroup bias: Evidence that priming the secure base schema attenuates negative reactions to out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2001; 81(1): 97–115.

     "There are two remarkable things about the empirical findings summarized (in the paper above). One is that meaningful benefits emerge not only from actual secure attachments in real-life relationships, but also from the mere activation of attachment-connoting concepts into working memory. The second remarkable finding is that these beneficial effects are found across such a diverse range of meaningful outcomes. The cognitive priming of attachment security makes people healthier. It leads them to be more compassionate and helpful to others. It reduces prejudice. Future research will, no doubt, discover yet more benefits that emerge from the simple priming of attachment security. I’m tempted to believe that a sense of secure attachment may be the psychological equivalent of a broad-spectrum antibiotic — a sort of universal antidote to everything that ails us." 
       Schaller M. Is secure attachment the antidote to everything that ails us? Psychological Inquiry 2007; 18(3): 191-193.

       There's a problem with this "universal antidote." Wisdom traditions agree that serious evolution of consciousness begins with LETTING GO of ATTACHMENT - to everything, without exception.

 

On a Journey, with No Place to Rest

     Don't we crave security, certainty, safety, stability, predictability, the idea of being able to control our external & internal environment?

     How do we relate to the fact that none of these are real?

     What if the only "home" were a loving, conscious openness to the mystery of timeless, unpredictable, uncontrollable internal & external change?