inter-related

“In a real sense all life is inter-related.  All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.  This is the inter-related structure of reality.“- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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speaking of jesus…

and other stuff…

amen

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sacred gift

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re: but seriously, happy easter

much more serious… or we could just call it truthful insight… found it on paulo coelho’s blog… yes, he has one… and yes, i think it’s worth checking out….

Revolutionary and Rebel

Khalil Gibran had said that twenty centuries ago, men loved the weakness in Jesus and did not understand his power.

Jesus did not live as a coward and did not die complaining and suffering. He lived as a revolutionary and was crucified as a rebel.

“He was not a bird with broken wings, but a violent storm.”
“He was not a victim of his persecutors and had not suffered at the hands of his executioners – he was free before all.”
“He came to awaken a new and strong soul, which made every heart a temple, an altar, and every human being a priest.”

Looking carefully at his life, we see that, although he knew that his passion was inevitable, he tried to give us a sense of joy in every gesture.

He must have thought long and hard before deciding what his first miracle should be.

He must have considered the healing of a paralyzed man, the resurrection of the dead, the expulsion of a demon, something that his contemporaries would have considered as “noble”. After all, it would be the first time to show the world that he had come as the Son of God.

And it is written: his first miracle was turning water into wine – for a wedding party.

May the wisdom of this gesture inspire us, and be always present in our souls: the spiritual quest is compassion, enthusiasm and joy too.

Passion: let me not beg for the stilling of my pain

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield,
but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;

But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.”

by Rabindranath Tagore

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but seriously, happy easter

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melted into our heart

The more the wood – the hotter the fire . . .

Excerpted from “Taking the Leap” by Pema Chodron

So we start by making friends with our experience and developing warmth for our good old selves. Slowly, very slowly, gently, very gently, we let the stakes get higher as we touch in on more troubling feelings. This leads to trusting that we have the strength and good-heartedness to live in this precious world, despite its land mines, with dignity and kindness. With this kind of confidence, connecting with others comes more easily, because what is there to fear when we have stayed with ourselves through thick and thin? Other people can provoke anything in us and we don’t need to defend ourselves by striking out or shutting down.

Selfless help, helping others without an agenda, is the result of our having helped ourselves. We feel loving towards ourselves and therefore we feel loving towards others. Over time all those we used to feel separate from become more and more melted into our heart.

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the middle way

photo by brooke golightly

The Big Squeeze

by Pema Chodron

Excerpted from “True Happiness”

Sounds True, Inc.

This is the place where most of us hang out for a long time, in what I sometimes call the big squeeze, where you are sort of caught between your idealistic notions of how you want to be (and how you think everyone else should be as well), and your “human frailty” if you want to call it that – the realness of your cravings, or the strength of your habitual patterns. You are sort of caught and rubbed between these two things…

(the sound of Ani-la rubbing her hands together is heard in the recording over a brief period of silence)

And, it’s very interesting, because on the one hand there is your idealism, how one “should” be. And then you are up against how you actually are. And interestingly enough – if you actually allow yourself to be rubbed instead of being harsh on yourself, if you will allow yourself to be rubbed – this is a place were some sort of real balance comes in. You really learn what is the middle way between idealism and craving, some kind of middle way where you can hold your seat, you can keep your heart open and stay receptive to these difficult places. You can stay open and more and more you can not harm yourself by doing the same things over and over.

But it’s half way… you’re sort of right in the middle of something, and I really think this is the place where we learn compassion for ourselves. This is the place where we begin to have some appreciation for what other people are up against, some real empathy, instead of just criticizing them all the time.

When you see yourself, how strong your aspiration is and how you are not always able to measure up, you learn so much from this inbetween state of a really good-hearted strong wish to not block your buddha-nature, and yet still finding yourself in that very place.

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