Resistance, Baggage & Awakening

    We ALL KNOW (at least subconsciously) that there's something more true, authentic & wholesome we yearn to experience. AND PARADOXICALLY we ALL resist change, naturally opting to keep thinking, speaking & behaving the way we're used to. This unique pattern of habits forms our (mistaken) identity - who / what we believe we actually are. The major reason why we resist shifting to experience what we know to be more true, authentic & wholesome, is fear of losing this 'self' - this false, mistaken, small sense of identity.

    “What I failed to realize was that my resistance was in itself a pose, a stance – a result of my conditioning ... I’d never been stripped of myself, and so I mistook a cleverly embroidered outfit of attitudes for my deepest self, which I had to ‘be true to.’ Through the path of negation of self, I began to get an inkling of just how thoroughly cloaked I was in attitudes & platitudes – in my own bullshit – and I also learned that despite this, I had to keep going." Shozan Jack Haubner
    Our personal ('me, myself & I') & collective ego ('my' religion, political party, race, color, etc) is far, far more DOMINANT in our thoughts, words & actions than we realize, UNTIL we start actively freeing ourselves from ego's overriding control by waking up. Until then, the 'I' and the 'we' are emotionally defended at all cost, while everyone else is certainly at least childish, if not dangerously wrong. As we evolve spiritually, communication becomes less & less an ego vs ego 'pissing contest,' and increasingly a heart-to-heart transmission where words are less & less important.

    Laurence Freeman is a wise Catholic meditation teacher, mystic & reformer. The first 46 minutes of this video is WELL worth a listen re the importance of meditation practice to help us shift out of personal & collective ego and into oneness with God : https://wccmplus.org/programs/collection-7tvyeorb8d0?cid=2761089&permalink=monte_oliveto_silent_retreat_-_july_2021-540p-224f09

    “Simply stated, (practice) is the act of un-practicing habituated tendencies that cause us to (mis)perceive reality as divided into subjects & objects, pasts & futures, and problems & solutions. When we slow down this momentum of the mind, we begin to remember (experientially) what it is to be unbound, vast, and intimate with all of existence. In short, to practice is to undo habituated mental patterns that cause us to suffer. As long as there is a sense of a self-apart, (the one struggling to get life right, to wake up, and to solve the problem of being a suffering human), then directing the effort that arises out of that sense, to an investigation of your true nature, is a valuable undertaking.”
    Angelo DiLullo MD. “Awake. It’s Your Turn.” 2021. Wise, gentle yet powerful guidance HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

    “Sensing how caught up (the professor) was in intellectual concepts rather than benefiting from practice in her own heart, Achaan Chah answered her quite directly, ‘You, madam, are like one who keeps hens in her yard,’ he told her, ‘and goes around picking up the chicken droppings instead of the eggs.’” Kornfield J, Breiter P. “A Still Forest Pool. The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah.” Quest Books, 1985.
    It's incredibly easy to wander off topic - onto intellectual pursuits, daydreaming, surfing the web for related & completely unrelated topics, etc, etc, INSTEAD OF being fully present & appropriate, here & now. Another, almost as important point Chah's story illustrates is how common & easy it is to listen only "from the neck up" instead of "listening with our whole body" ie using all of our intelligences.

    Adyashanti's very recent, excellent online presentation, on deep listening (& more):
    “The quality with which we listen, or engage in anything, really dictates how much we receive back from it. This applies to anything you do – listen to a dharma lecture, doing any task around the house, any job, anything. If we really open ourselves up to anything that we’re doing, if we can listen from that quiet mind, those are the moments when we tend to also receive, and sometimes in quite unexpected ways.
    Remembering that we can always use our analytical mind, with its critiques & judgments – we can always do that later, if we want to do that. That’s totally fine, if we feel that’s necessary.
    But in the moment, just opening the whole body, listening with the whole body. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I mean by ‘listening with the whole body.’ It’s really listening with all your senses. And if you just hold that intention, over the days, it will start to clarify for you what that means, because it’s actually not that complicated. We do it when we lay down in a really relaxed way, or if you ever just sat down listening to the rain drops fall. You’re not listening to the rain drops fall in an analytical way. Your analytical mind is not leading then, it’s a part of the picture but a much bigger spectrum of your being is involved in something as simple as listening to rain drops.”
    September 6, 2023 Broadcast with Adyashant https://www.youtube.com/user/Adyashanti

    And finally a cautionary tale re resisting change, procrastination & remaining 'comfortably numb':
    “A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
    All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
    Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
    The old eagle looked up in awe. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
    ‘That’s the eagle, the king of birds,’ said his neighbor. ‘He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we’re chickens.’ So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.” Anthony de Mello SJ
    At a certain stage in life, some of us realize that there's no time to waste on trivial pursuit:  activities we now find meaningless, small-talk, groups & individuals immersed in concerns that we've outgrown, etc. There seem to be an awful lot of chickens around - AND YET - we're ALL eagles.

Bald Eagle www.pxfuel.com

Listening Attitude to Life

     "Listening is an interesting attitude. Just stopping and listening - there's something very profound about that. It takes effort to listen, but it's not willful in the sense of trying to do something, to become something. Listening is a form of empathy. You're allowing the experience of sound to come into you and then understanding it, not intellectually, not as an idea, but as a felt experience. You can apply that same quality of inner listening to your fears and desires, hopes and expectations, and disappointments - to your personality and all the rest of the business of being human."

       Ajahn Viradhammo, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Summer 2013
http://tisarana.ca/

     More on listening: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=listening

Vittorio Fracassi   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

Be Quiet, LISTEN & Learn

     In our "culture, where language is associated only with vocalization and speech, we fall within a 'discursive rationality' which makes the world amenable to linguistic and discursive ordering, molding, & systematization. Any speech act is 'potentially normative,' ... as 'the speech act selects an aspect of reality simply by speaking about it, and whatever is said is then transformed into the statutory basis of a discourse' which 'can ultimately result in constraint and epistemic control'. In a culture of 'discursive rationality,' the dominant form of knowledge is one that objectifies, organises, conceptualises, normalizes, & dictates. To 'know' the world, we categorize what we see and experience in the world – things, people – into concepts & ideas. Instead of being open to the rich moment-to-moment experiences in our encounters with people and things, we 'know' & relate to them primarily through our presumed concepts about them. Such orientation produces a sense of cognitive order & control in our relations to the world. A well-known example is the European empires’ extensive categorizing & detailed mapping of the geography, fauna, flora, habitat, & people of their colonies in their effort to rule & control them.
     'Listening rationality,' on the other hand, functions in the context of 'silence.' It quiets our mind, takes away our (illusory) sense of security & control, and opens us to the untidiness, contradictions, & richness of being which cannot be bound by conceptual ordering. It invites us to the openness of not knowing and the 'risk' of growth. Silence can be 'a very fertile way of relating, (as it) might indicate a healthy desire to set aside certain automatic defenses that are only intended to fill emotional vacuums' and 'a desire to abandon automatic verbal sequences that fill our games (of social interactions). The highest function of silence,' therefore, 'is revealed in the creation of a co-existential space which permits dialogue to come along'. Listening in the context of silence involves 'the renunciation of a predominantly molding & ordering activity' and represents 'the readiness to tear away ideologizing modes of reflection which define & constrict the ways of coexistence'. It can be 'a support to the hermeneutic effort whereby we seek to establish a relationship between our world and a different "world," between our own attitude and a different attitude'.  
     Listening is also 'the attitude which can unblock the creative resources immobilized by the rigidity of traditional "logical" education'. It requires considerable 'dialogic patience' to give space to the 'inexpressible,' so that 'the inner experience which is less suited to being "spoken" can be expressed in some way'. In 'listening rationality,' the person who knows is someone who transforms him/herself in order to know, rather than objectifies the world in order to recognize her/himself in his/her cognitive conceptual immobility. To reach the 'highest function of listening silence' for coexistence to be possible, therefore, it is important that we are not confined by the conceptual mind and dominant discourses which categorize, normalize, & exclude. bell hooks proposes education as 'the practice of freedom.' I suggest that is also what critical social work education is about: the practice of freedom from the predominant order of things, that is, 'to transgress' the mode of 'discursive rationality' which privileges the mind and has been governing our production of knowledge & our relations to the world."

       Wong Y-L.R. "Knowing Through Discomfort: A Mindfulness-based Critical Social Work Pedagogy." Critical Social Work 2004; 5:(1) http://www1.uwindsor.ca/criticalsocialwork/knowing-through-discomfort-a-mindfulness-based-critical-social-work-pedagogy

cgravel   www.dpreview.com

Listening

     "To listen" in Chinese

     "The characters in 'ting' represent the eyes, the ears, the heart, (the total being) and undivided attention. ... Listening requires the whole being to be involved when trying to understand what is being communicated. And the concept of undivided attention is crucial. ... one listens with the whole being."

        Beall ML. Perspectives on intercultural listening. in Wolvin AD ed. Listening and human communication in the 21st century. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010.

     You may wish to see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/mystery-essence-of-all-life.html

The Real Deal

“There is something in every one of you
that waits and listens
for the sound of the genuine in yourself.
It is the only guide you will ever have.
And if you cannot hear it,
you will all of your life spend your days
on the ends of strings
that somebody else pulls.”
Howard Thurman

 

    Rick Archer (RA): "Here’s a question from (a listener), 'Spiritual discussions ... are essentially a discussion of the human condition. However, for some people, the word 'spiritual' has baggage, misunderstandings with it, such as baggage from mainstream religions.
    If they actually understood that what is being talked about and explored is really just the essential human condition, then they may be much more attracted to it. Somehow it feels like the word spiritual may put some people off, even though that’s what they’re really looking for. How can language be modified to open spirituality to a wider audience?' "

    Amoda Maa (AM): "Yes, I agree, in the sense that the word spiritual has a lot of baggage, it has a lot of connotations, and it is about the human condition. I do actually speak about this a lot. If you watch my videos or listen to some of my talks, I’ve often spoken about how it’s an existential inquiry, not a spiritual inquiry.
    It’s existential in the sense that this is about the human condition and whatever language we use, it’s always going to be some kind of cover-up against the real discovery of the real truth. We have to use language to have any kind of dialogue and personally, I sort of naturally play with that language in the sense that I come from it this way and this way, and depending on who I’m speaking with, then I hopefully facilitate an examination of what is meant by spiritual and whether that spiritual concept, that idea of spirituality is actually an impediment to something.
    Very often I talk about throwing away the whole concept of spirituality and opening as an authentic human being to the experience you’re having so that the whole polarity of spiritual and non-spiritual just collapses because that’s another divided state. We divide into spiritual and non-spiritual or spiritual and human. Yes, there’s a lot in that question."

    RA: "I always find myself coming back to definitions and asking people to define how they use terms like awakening, or spiritual or whatever, because sometimes these terms are thrown about glibly, as though everyone agreed upon their meanings. Even the word 'God,' I think, a lot of people are squeamish about that one, but it actually refers to something really beautiful if you really define it. Not as the guy with the beard in the clouds, but as the sort of intelligence that permeates and orchestrates every little bit of creation, which you can see plainly if you take a look, even through the lens of modern science, there’s something marvelous and mysterious going on. You have to keep going back and defining these terms if you’re going to use them."

    AM: "Yes, and just keep on unraveling or surrendering every concept that we have that we think we know what it means."

    RA: "Yes, that’s a good point."

    AM: "Surrendering that meaning like, don’t find meaning in the words. The words are just words. Of course, we have to be accurate so we’re not just using any old words in a messy or misleading fashion. I use words very accurately, but don’t over-invest meaning in those words.
    Listen to what is inside that, listen to the vibration. It’s back to the listening thing. Listen with your being and then you’ll find that the words are just like little arrows that keep pointing you to something and if you keep on surrendering the investment of meaning in those words, you fall into the beingness that it’s pointing to."

    RA: "(Recently) Deepak Chopra was going on about how everything is a concept. Every idea we have, even about physical things like the moon, the universe, gravity, or anything else, it’s all human concepts. I kept saying, yes, but those concepts actually do refer to something which has its own intrinsic reality, regardless of how clearly or accurately we conceptualize it. I mean, the moon doesn’t depend upon our understanding of it. It didn’t change from green cheese to rock when our understanding of it became a little bit more mature. It is what it is and we do our best with concepts and words and what not to grasp what’s actually going on and to communicate that with others."

    AM: "If you’re listening from concepts, then you’ll hear concepts. If you’re listening from openness, you’ll hear love.”
    Amoda Maa - 2nd Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview https://batgap.com/amoda-maa-2/

 

    Iain McGilchrist, from his neuroscience / psychiatry perspective, would say that "listening from concepts" is our 'quick-and-dirty' literal left-hemisphere perspective. However, we "listen from openness" and a balanced perspective when our right-hemisphere in charge, which is contextual, capable of understanding nuance, tone of voice, facial expression, body-language, paradox, metaphor etc, while the left hemisphere plays an important supportive role. See: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/

    I often mention how we all have brief glimpses of awakening when we lovingly gaze into the eyes of babies and puppies. We practice the "soft peripheral gaze" during meditation practice.
    Amoda Maa's wonderful take on this:

 

    “The way we see things is fundamental to our state of consciousness. By softening our gaze, we can open to the love inherent in ourselves. It's a falling away of the veils of perception that allows our eyes to open to direct reality.

    When we see from the tight knot of me-self – and what is that ‘tight knot of me-self’? It’s a bunch of unexamined thoughts, beliefs, concepts that has to do with 'my thoughts' usually. My thoughts of this, that, comfort, discomfort, liking, disliking, or even the thoughts of me as a separate entity, that needs to be loved, that needs to be here, secure, and this, this, this… It’s a tight, narrow focus. And then we look upon things, the world, life, and we see separate things. So there’s a division here - a subject and an object, a me here and things, life, out there, outside of me. This we can support in shifting perception in a very simple way, because when we see from the tight knot of me-self – subject and objects, subject and objects – we do not really see reality. We see our projections onto reality. So the world or life is veiled. These are the veils of perception that create the Maya. The world is not as we see it, but as we believe it. We project these unexamined beliefs - even the belief that the world is ‘out there’ is an unexamined belief.
    So we can support a shift in perception that opens the doorway to clear seeing. Clear seeing has a fundamentally different quality. Rather than seeing through the eyes of separation, fear, craving & aversion, we see through the eyes of love. That doesn’t mean that we always like what we see, or that we even agree with it, but something internal changes. It’s an inner transformation of consciousness. That’s what it means to see the beloved in everything. It softens the inner gaze.
    Normally when we look, we look at boundaries. We look at the boundary of a thing and in that way we can identify it. We tend to look at the detail or the boundary, the edges. This is valuable in functioning, doing things, crossing the road, chopping things, whatever we need to be aware of edges as such. But when that becomes the default position, it becomes a limited view that occludes true nature – the radiance of all things, which is really in you, not inherent in the thing.
    Imagine falling in love. You gaze into the other’s eyes. What’s actually happening, in that falling in love, in that moment of gazing? The eyes are very wide open. They’re very soft in fact. The gaze is not narrowly-focused on the edges. When we look into eyes (with love), we are looking into the formless. We are not looking at the form. We are looking into the beingness. We call that 'falling in love.' What we’re falling in love with – of course there’s a whole bunch of other ideas: I like this person, and I agree with this person, I’m sexually attracted to this person, it doesn’t matter which sex it is. Look into the eyes of a friend, look into the eyes of your mother, look into the eyes of your child. 

    When this focus is soft, unfocused, and we look at eyes – we’re not looking at the shape of the eyes, or the color of the eyes, we’re looking straight into, if you like, beingness. When beingness in you meets beingness in another, love arises. That love gets mistaken for loving the other, loving the form, and then all sorts of either good things or bad things happen, depending whose eyes you’re looking into. This is often where the guru-disciple relationship also gets a little bit mixed up. 

    But if we do not jump to taking ownership of the form, and remain in the openness & stillness of beingness, love arises, love arises in you, because it’s your natural state. It’s inherent in you. So it’s really not about the other, or the object, it’s about what transforms in you: openness, beingness, stillness, presence give rise to the inherent quality, vibration or frequency of love. What is that love? It’s unconditionality, it’s openness itself, it’s peace, the end of the argument. There’s no subject and object to create a division, a separation. For a moment at least there is peace.”
    Amoda Maa “How Softening Your Gaze Transforms Everything to Love” https://www.amodamaa.com/essential-teachings

    “Freedom is available to you here & now, if you are willing to reject nothing, welcome everything, and surrender into the deepest falling of the open heart.” Amoda Maa

    “Real spiritual practice is a heartful expression of what is most true & meaningful to each of us.” Adyashanti

Suezan Aikins - "Iris Moon" - fogforestgallery.ca

What CAN We Do?

    I'm sure I'm not alone wanting a wise, big-picture overview of life, so I can live my best life.
    Mystics of all wisdom traditions, passed & living, are connected to & share this wisdom. 

    One of the wisest quotes I've come across:  
    "The most important question to ask ourselves, according to Einstein: 
    'Is the universe a friendly place or not?' ... If we believe that the universe is unfriendly ... peace will be elusive at best." 
    Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993. 

    Even intelligent, educated people seem overwhelmed by mysticism for many reasons. First and foremost, our culture is by and large ignorant about mystics & mysticism. Our "consumer society" trains us to buy as much as possible as fast as possible, "greed is good," even after 9/11 George W. told Americans to show the world what they're made of, "Go shopping!" We're starving on a restricted diet of junk food (shallow materialistic concerns), and don't even know the vocabulary of nutrition (metaphysics, spirituality). We fear what we don't know, and procrastinate & otherwise avoid learning about it.

    "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
    Marie Curie, Nobel Prizes in Physics, & Chemistry 

   "... relax, allow life to be as it is, & open your heart to yourself. It’s easier than you might think, and it could change your life.”
    Kristin Neff. “Self-Compassion. The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.” HarperCollins, 2011. 

 
      "I was born
       when all I once feared
       I could love.”                     Rabia Basri 

      "Once we are willing to be directly intimate with our life as it arises, joy emerges out of the simplest of life experiences." Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara 

      During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda  

     "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen   

    SO, what CAN we do? Not should, not must - although our time as individual mortal beings, as well as a species is running out - but absolutely CAN do, because wisdom that is IN ALL of US, the wisdom that is in fact who/what we actually are, is amazingly what we mostly, and in some almost entirely, have forgotten.
    Here's some of what I've understood from the many imho wise elders I've been reading about, listening to on the web, occasionally meeting, and more recently, blogging about: 

 

    Don't Judge. Every day we see outrageous, disgusting behavior on the news. It's disorienting to see how almost half of the US population fervently supports behavior, that in a few years (as Germans did after WWII) they will categorically deny having even known anything about it. So it's hard not to judge terrible behavior. 
    But from a much higher, non-dual perspective, what if we're each born to play a certain role, with a certain set of talents, a certain set of limitations & no matter how wonderful or horrible it appeared, we all did our best. And what if most of our ridiculous behavior was because most (but mercifully not all) of us completely forgot that we took on our role freely, including the fact that we are actually producers & executive directors of the entire play - almost identical to the Jesus being fully human and fully Divine story, except the he had almost complete recall of who he actually was, where he came from, and where he would return to.
    Bewildered? This blog & its video might help: http://www.johnlovas.com/2023/01/the-nearly-unforgivables.html 

 

     Be Discerning. Many of us spend a great deal of time watching / listening to the news & comments about the news. While it's important to perhaps watch / listen to the CBC or BBC news for 30 minutes a day, much more than that is probably masochistic or even an addiction. Doing more & more of what makes you feel sick is not a recipe for optimal healthy.
    Instead of a steady diet of psychopathic politicians, billionaires, "influencers", and other nightmare visions, for the sake of sanity - how about reading about and listening to wise elders? My blogs are all about inspiring, mature, healthy, wise role models, like: 

    James Finley: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Finley .

    Helen Hamilton: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Helen+Hamilton .  

    Rainer Maria Rilke: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rilke . 

    Robert A. Johnson: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Robert+A.+Johnson

    Rami Shapiro: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rami+Shapiro . 

    Richard Rohr: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Richard+Rohr .  

    Henry Shukman: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Henry+Shukman .  

    John Welwood: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=John+Welwood .

    Toni Packer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Toni+Packer . 

    Ram Dass: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Ram+Dass .

    James Hollis: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=James+Hollis . 

    Roger Walsh: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Roger+Walsh .

    David Whyte: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Whyte .

    Norman Fischer: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Norman+Fischer .

    David Steindl-Rast: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=David+Steindl-Rast . 

and MANY MORE wise elders to learn from & be inspired by. 

    It's OUR CHOICE - our free will - whether we immerse ourselves in wisdom - OR - in darkness. "Too busy", yet doomscrolling for hours each day?; is this wisdom stuff "too deep" or "too confusing", and again, "just too busy" to get into it and learn? You can procrastinate and aim at best for feeling superficially OK, "ordinary unhappiness" - OR - discover what life is really about.

 

    Learn & Do Spiritual Practices.  Theory is important BUT not enough. We need to intentionally PRACTICE shifting from being fearful consumer robots to becoming wise elder human beings.
    Our culture is not big on "practices." Some of us might admire the dedication it takes to become world class athletes, dancers, surgeons etc, but most of us just don't have the dedication to put in the time & effort. 
    The ONE area where ALL of us would massively benefit is putting in dedicated time & effort into spiritual practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=spiritual+practice 

 

    Be a Nurturing Presence. Only by waking up to who/what we truly are, can we help instead of hinder others to wake up and help others. 
    “… we have to allow our higher nature to show before we can do anything real, before we can be truly responsible people.” Jiyu-Kennett. “The Wild, White Goose. The Diary of a Female Zen Priest.” ed 2. Shasta Abbey Press. 2002.

 

    Be Humble. The ego is a tricky, sticky, persistent trickster. We must regularly check our own BS-meter. A common problem is assuming a massive group ego - thinking one can do even horrible things because "I'm doing God's work." But such "crazy wisdom" is just crazy. To paraphrase Forest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does." 
    Humility, gentleness, empathy, wisdom & kindness are rarely promoted or even recognized in our consumer culture & partisan religions. 

 

     Learn Self-compassion. The tough, aggressively self-reliant, workaholic individual is venerated these days, while a decent, nurturing, humble person would be branded "a loser" by today's dictators & billionaire CEOs. So decent human beings need to intentionally practice self-compassion, in order to survive & be effective in today's crass, superficial, heartless environment.

 

    Practice Self-awareness. With self-awareness practice, your talk & your walk are kept aligned. Again, humility is crucial. 
    "Self-inquiry" is a specialized, key, self-awareness practice: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Self-inquiry 

 

    Become More Discerning, More Self-compassionate. The more neuroses & "story of me" burdens we shed, the more clearly we see ourselves & what's going on around us. The more clearly we see, the more magnified our remaining (though diminishing) neuroses & other burdens appear to us, so it can seem like we're regressing instead of "getting ahead." So we need more self-compassion & patience with ourself.
    “Felt reality is invariably wept reality, and wept reality is soon compassion and kindness. Decisive and harsh judgments slip away in the tracks of tears. And when we cry, we are revealing our truest, most loving self.” Richard Rohr. “The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage” Convergent Books, 2025.

  

     Live in Joy. Gradually, you will be progressively more peaceful & joyful, regardless of the many challenges & sorrows in your own & loved ones' life, as well as that of the human race. The major, even crippling burden that you will shed is your identification with & constant rehashing of your own 'story of me' AS WELL AS its twin, the constant anxiety of 'what will happen to me?' and of course, vividly imagining the worst possibilities. As this HEAVY PSYCHOLOGIC BURDEN starts to lift, you start to experience 'the peace that surpasses all understanding' ie it must be experienced to be understood. Even this has, if you will, a 'dark side': while you'll see as your own past, no matter how miserable, as just a story, your empathy towards others (even actors playing a sad role in a movie) becomes progressively more powerful. Your job now is embodying peace & joy modeling equanimity even in the midst of chaos, when it's the most essential.

    "This is actually instruction from the Buddha, where he says, ‘Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace, even among the troubled. Look within. Be still, free from fears and attachments. Know the sweet joy of living in the way things are in the Way, the Dharma.' 
    And so this is also a challenge. He doesn’t say, let’s get rid of disease and all these problems, but to find a joyful way to be alive amidst it all.”
    Jack Kornfield - Finding Your Self on the Spiritual Path - Point of Relation with Thomas Hübl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fjz7WaTyX4 WONDERFUL MATURE WISDOM - Jack Kornfield at his best

    And some 500 years later, in another incarnation of the Divine, Jesus said, "the poor will always be with us." Fixating on quickly eliminating age-old problems is in itself problematic, akin to "seeing a splinter in another's eye," again from Jesus, advising that we should first address our own significant flaws (‘the beam’ in our own eye) before attempting to correct / "save" others.

“The teachings on Buddha Nature do not mean that there is some nucleus of Buddhhood enclosed in sentient beings 
behind the temporary obscuring stains. 
Rather, our whole existence as sentient beings is in itself 
the sum of temporary stains that float like clouds in the infinite, bright sky of Buddha Nature, the luminous, open expanse 
of our mind that has no limits or boundaries. 
Once these clouds dissolve from the warm rays of the sun 
of wisdom shining in this space, 
nothing within sentient beings has been freed or developed, 
but there is just this radiant expanse without any reference points of cloud-like sentient beings or cloud-free Buddhas." 
Sthiramati, 6th century Indian Buddhist scholar-monk

 

 

     Watching David Ditchfield's 40-minute BBC interview about his Near-Death Experience (NDE) is imho wise use of your precious time: https://www.shineonthestory.com/