In The Driver's Seat

Awakening to Deep Time gave us a vast perspective of the evolutionary process and of our place at the leading edge of this unfolding;

The Pull of the Possible reveals how that vibrant energy - Eros, which created and is still creating the universe and which impels us toward the future - is the very core of our being;

This Andrew Cohen Quote of the Week, In The Driver's Seat, suggests how we can fully engage in that process:

The central tenet of Evolutionary Enlightenment is that a more enlightened future for our world depends on one thing and one thing alone - our very own higher development. The world around us changes for the better as much as we're willing to change ourselves. If both you and I are committed to our own personal and spiritual evolution, and the relationship between us is based upon that commitment first and foremost, then the world can't help but become a better place because we are here.

How much do we really care about how unthinkably positive this life we're living right now could become? Now we have a real chance to find out. Right from the very outset, this teaching puts us in the most important place: in the driver's seat of our lives and our destiny.

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The Pull of the Possible

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein

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We hear a lot these days about learning to be in the present moment, and that is very good advice. But, like Andrew Cohen, I am more powerfully attracted to the moment right after that - to what's next? what's possible? where can we go from here? how far?

In this EnlightenNext Blog post, Cohen envisions "... a worldspace that is humming and thriving with the unique vibrancy that is the authentic expression of what I call the Evolutionary Impulse. I'm referring to Eros, that powerful vertical thrust in the cosmos, which created and is still creating the entire universe, including you and me.

When we awaken to the primordial movement of this impulse at the core of our being, we become aware of a part of ourselves that is untouched by anything and everything that has ever occurred within the sphere of our personal and psychological experience. This part of ourselves is always ecstatically and urgently compelled towards the as-yet-unmanifest future and is ever-focused on that alone ... Because of what is becoming visible on the horizon of our inner vision, we are captivated by the immediacy of the potential within our reach. And that in and of itself is quite marvelous, wonderful and spiritually enlivening indeed."
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A comment from Gayle: "What if... 'the possible' is pulling us forward into our next evolution and there is nothing we can do or not do to hasten or stop it? What if it only appears that we are creating the future at the leading edge but in actuality each of us is perfectly positioned, uniquely designed for this moment in apparent time ... and we are That which designs it all. What an amazing game that would be! It seems the moment I fall into the grace of presence, it all unfolds perfectly. Hmmm...."

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and whether or not it is clear to you
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should
- Desiderata
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Awakening to Deep Time

"When we become aware of the vastness of the entire evolutionary process - from the Big Bang to the present moment - that is called Awakening to Deep Time."

"It means having the capacity to assume a perspective that is nothing less than cosmic and being able to see whatever's happening to us personally from its lofty vantage point. It is also the profound recognition that our very own present-day highly evolved capacity for consciousness, cognition, introspection, compassion, empathy and even spiritual insight has all been produced by this deep-time developmental process."

In this EnlightenNext Editors' Blog, Andrew Cohen reveals how this changes everything.

"It means that our personal experience is not half as personal as it seems to be. It also means something that is so startling it is hard to let in. It means that human beings, because of our highly developed brains, are the very leading edge of the entire panoramic unfolding. And as far as we know, we are the only life-form in this vast process that has gained the capacity for self-reflective awareness. The personal implications inherent in this truth are enormous. When we ask the question, "Who am I?" from the perspective of cosmic evolution, the answer comes back:

"I am the universe becoming aware of itself in human form."

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Outrageously Sincere and Wildly Psychedelically Hued Furry, Feathered and Otherly Surfaced Animated Beings Joyously Performing High Opera

to entertain and uplift us...



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Beauty, Decency and Loss

Krista Tippett (Speaking of Faith) and Kate Braestrup talk about love, death, God and miracles...

Kate Braestrup is a Maine writer and a Unitarian Universalist chaplain to game wardens on search-and-rescue missions. She is called in when children disappear in the woods, when snowmobilers disappear under the ice. Kate Braestrup likes to say that she is "religious but not spiritual" -- she is, she says, a doer, and her sense of God emerges from what happens between and among people. We hear about the wisdom she draws from the world of law enforcement in the wild. There, as she puts it, "the rubber meets the road" theologically.

From the human dramas in which she becomes implicated, Braestrup gleans and shares insight into the raw processes of human grief and healing -- the fact that waiting for news of a missing person is aching physical labor; the way in which the officer who has just discovered a young woman's body in the woods becomes acutely aware of the feel of ordinary ground under the soles of his boots; the simple, stunning, recurring experience that human beings are equipped, preparing unconsciously in all we do, to deal with unimaginable loss. These losses are final, and yet they have a power to draw beauty and decency into relief, to be tended and redeemed on some level, by the practical care -- the human concern -- that arises to meet them.

Among her many bracing reformulations of basic truth, Kate Braestrup notes that we only use the word miracle when improbable events go our way. But she inhabits a world where improbable things go wrong, go badly, all the time -- and so do the rest of us. Her Unitarian Universalist sensibility is reflected in her sense that Christianity has spent too much time focusing on death as a problem to be solved. This is our culture's instinct, certainly; and yet as it turns, notions like solution and resolution are meaningless at the hinges of our lives.

Of the deepest lessons she draws from her work in the wilds of Maine, Kate Braestrup writes this: "Sometimes the miracle is a life restored, but the restoration is always temporary. At other times, perhaps most of the time, a miracle can only be the resurrection of love beside the unchanged fact of death."

To listen to the audio version of this broadcast (52 minutes), click on the play button below. To read the discussion as a transcript, go to the Speaking of Faith website, and under Program Details click on Transcript.

Kate Braestrup: "If nothing else, and that's a big if, but if nothing else, God is that force that drives us to really see each other and to really behold each other and respond to each other. And for me that is actually enough."
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Two Ways of Seeing

For your enjoyment...



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The Freak Factor

Ever wonder what might have happened if Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had gone to Hollywood and gotten a nose job? If so, you're not alone.

This manifesto by David Rendall on the ChangeThis site suggests that success and happiness lie not in overcoming our weaknesses, but in discovering that our apparent flaws are clues to our true strengths.

Do you want to make history or at least make a difference? Unlike Rudolph, we don't have to just wait for the right situation to come along - we can seek it out or even create it.

Rendall cites three examples from his own life:
1. There is nothing wrong with you. Weaknesses are important clues to your strengths.
2. You find success when you find the right fit. You need to match your unique characteristics to situations that reward those qualities.
3. Your weaknesses make you different. They make you a freak, and it's good to be a freak.

In the final segment, "Putting Your Quirks To Work", he offers gems of wisdom - my favorite is:
~Engage in permanent procrastination
~~ instead of procrastinating activities you don't like, just stop doing them altogether.

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The secret to success is to find out what it is you don't do well and don't do it.
- Author Unknown
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Unicorns and Virgins

See if this sounds familiar...

Whew, it took a lot of effort, but I finally have it all - a beautiful home, the perfect job, a nice car, the two most remarkable cats ever (apologies to other cat lovers - I'm sure your kitties are quite adequate, but...), high-speed Internet, enough money to not worry about it, etc., etc. Friends tell me I'm living the dream. So how come I'm not happy? I'm supposed to be happy. Maybe there's no such thing as happiness after all...

From The Paradox of Happiness by John Tarrant
in the Shambhala Sun, January 2004

The unicorn of happiness is not elusive because it is an illusion - it is real. It just inhabits a different dimension from getting and losing and good and evil and pleasure and loss, which are the places we usually look for it.

The legend of the unicorn says that it is attracted to virgins; indeed, virgins are its only known weakness. Before you despair, it might be interesting to take this bit about virgins as an image of what goes on in the mind. The virginal mind is innocent in the positive sense. The innocent mind is not thinking about itself and what it can get. It isn't thinking, "How do I look as unicorn bait?" "No unicorn could ever be interested in me." "I'll be famous if I catch a unicorn." "How do I construct the best unicorn-catching machine?"

Instead, the innocent mind is just hanging out, living its life. It attracts the unicorn because it is like the unicorn, who is also just hanging out, living its life.

further on,

The Chinese unicorn is sighted even more rarely than the European one. It is said to have appeared at the time of Confucius' birth and to have a taste for wisdom. One sage had the interesting thought that if a unicorn is so seldom seen, you might not know for certain what it looks like. It might be capable of changing shape. In fact, you might meet one and not realize it. How can you be sure a unicorn is not present on a given occasion? You might be sitting with the unicorn of happiness at this very moment and not know it. Perhaps when you are unhappy, you are just not paying attention.

he concludes,

When you get the hang of being more interested in life than in agreeing with your thoughts, then you will get the life you get. And you will be able to have as much happiness as you want with almost no effort whatsoever. When you stop believing your thoughts, you look around just for you, just because it is interesting to look around. Some people call that enlightenment. But you won't call it that. You'll be too interested in the new view.

And you'll notice that wherever you look, there will be nothing but those damned unicorns.

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John Tarrant is the author of The Light Inside The Dark: Zen, Soul and the Spiritual Life (Harper Collins) and director of Pacific Zen Institute which conducts retreats devoted to koans, inquiry and the arts.
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Is That Me Bleeding?

We see so much suffering and injustice in the world, and it is our natural desire as humans to want to relieve this suffering. But what in the world can we do? How can we not be overwhelmed, how do we not retreat into helplessness and despair?

In this dialogue between Andrew Cohen and Roshi Bernie Glassman, we begin to see that in wanting to "solve" the world's problems we may be starting at the wrong end of the stick.

"When we live in a state of knowing, rather than unknowing, we're living in a fixed state of being where our notions of what should happen block us from seeing what actually does happen. We get upset because our expectations aren't met. The truth is, no matter what we think, we are never in control and things will happen as they happen. But in a state of unknowing we actually live without attachment to preconceived ideas. There is no expectation of gain, no expectation of loss."
- Bernie Glassman, in Bearing Witness.

True compassion reveals itself through our willingness to be with the rawness and discomfort of not knowing, again and again; our willingness to step through our fears and hesitations into that groundless place where we no longer pretend we have any answers. It is only from this state of open mind and broken heart - the place of our shared humanity - that we can truly see each other.

Then it's simple.

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The Led Zeppelin Guide to Creative World Domination

Do you have a great big "excuse me" written across your face?

There has never been a bigger, badder or better rock band than Led Zeppelin. And there never will be.

Now we’ve got that straight, let’s take a look at how they did it – and what you can learn from their example.

This post from Mark McGuinness of LateralAction is a real treat for Zeppelin fans as well as darn good advice for anyone. Mark's "takeaways" at the end of each section nail the point home, keeping it real about how we can show the world who we are and what we've got.

"Takeaway: Whatever you do, somebody somewhere will have a go at you. Personally, I'd rather be criticized for being over-ambitious than over-cautious. How about you?"

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and it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
then the piper will lead us to reason
and a new day will dawn for those who stand long
and the forest will echo with laughter
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Does Sex Matter?

Yin and yang. Active and passive. Driving and yielding. Assertive and receptive. Thinking and feeling. Eros and Agape. Rational and emotional. Hard and soft. Pointed and embracing. Strong and…

Well, you probably see where this is going. What exactly do we mean by masculine and feminine? Where does this leave us in relation to relations, sexual and/or otherwise?

The first thing I notice upon meeting another person is not whether they are short or tall, fat or thin, young or old - but whether they are male or female, and it makes a difference, consciously or unconsciously. Part of this is obviously a primitive survival response - is this person a potential mate or a potential threat? - a lot is related to personal history and karma.

But there are more subtle energies involved...

This article from the EnlightenNext Editors' Blog takes a look at another backlash of the feminist movement - how pushing men to be more "feminine" often fosters separation rather than the unity we (both sexes?) so yearn for.

"Our solution, for the time being, is to ask all integralists to put the words “masculine” and “feminine” on furlough for a year. Let’s see what happens when we stop using those words in business or in relation to personal growth or change. My hunch is that we’ll all be more effective at bringing about the changes that we want to see."

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Trippin' Down Abbey Road

Released almost 40 years ago, the Beatles' Abbey Road still does not disappoint. On the contrary, like most Beatles' music/poetry, their artistry reveals subtle textures and nuances which reverberate through time and space. While each song is a masterpiece individually, the album expresses itself most eloquently as a sumptuous feast offering many distinct but complementary flavors, one path with surprising twists and turns.

Opening with Lennon & McCartney's Come Together (one thing I can tell you is you've got to be free), softened and mellowed by Something (in the way she moves...) we are led on a playful romp through Maxwell's Silver Hammer (naughty boy), Oh! Darling (pure schmaltz) and Octopus's Garden (happy and safe). The mood palpably shifts with I Want You / She's So Heavy - an intimation of a deeper dimension to come - this segment takes us beyond our comfort zone into impatience and expectation; finally with Here Comes The Sun we can relax and let go (it's all right...); a wormhole opens with Because:

because the world is round it turns me on
because the wind is high it blows my mind
because the sky is blue it makes me cry

Then it starts to get really interesting...

Weaving sensuously through You Never Give Me Your Money (oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go) and (here comes the) Sun King (quando paramucho mi amore...), awareness like a guitar string vibrates in perfect harmony with ~~

Abruptly Mean Mr. Mustard (such a dirty old man) shatters that reverie - the energy shifts, expanding through a completely seamless transition as Polythene Pam rockets us higher and higher, reaching the album's exquisite crescendo, its perfect wave - cascading into She Came In Through The Bathroom Window (didn't anybody tell her...), riding the awesome power of that wave all the way to the shore...

Golden Slumbers is a gentle denouement, a tender lullabye (once there was a way to get back home), and that mood continues into Carry That Weight, but surprise! - another flawless segue into an incredible guitar/drum piece (oh yeah! all right!) and we peak again, with a joyous freefall to The End:

and in the end the love you take
is equal to the love you make

Her Majesty arrives after a silence that seems a bit too long, incongruous but somehow perfect - it pops the bubble and we're back.

What a trip.
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Not One, Not Two

Symbols can take us to a place we can't get to with words. Like art, poetry or music they cut through the thinking mind to reveal our source, our place of clarity - "the moment we never leave even though our mind strays quite far".

Preparing to lead a group deeper into that place of clarity - of wisdom - to find the raw beating heart which is at once our own and that of the entire cosmos, this symbol came to mind:

This is the Chinese symbol Yin/Yang, which is generally taken to represent feminine (yin) and masculine (yang) energies at play in the world. These energies manifest in different ways, not limited to our usual notions of male and female. There are many ways to express this interplay and interbalance of apparent opposites - space and energy, passive and active, water and fire, receptive and creative, dark and light, intuitive and rational, matter and spirit, wisdom and compassion.

Accepting the limitations of language to express these energies, words can sometimes point to the essence, like a finger pointing at the moon, with the caution, "do not mistake the finger for the moon". Another disclaimer - this is my own experience of how the power of this symbol resonates for me - it is in no way a scholarly treatise on the meaning of Yin/Yang.

The first thing noticed is that the symbol is a circle - a geometric shape often used to denote the sacred - "we all stand at the centre of a sacred circle". There is a very distinct black area (yin) and an equally distinct but opposite white area (yang). But these two are not sharply divided by a straight line down the middle, like a solid wall - they flow and dance together - the feeling is more of each holding and embracing the other within that one sacred space.

Significant also is the black dot within the white space, the white dot within the black space. Using wisdom (black/yin) and compassion (white/yang) as our reference points, we can see that the seed of compassion is contained within wisdom, at the same time the seed of wisdom is contained within compassion.

In this image the Yin and Yang are in perfect balance, complete harmony. This is our natural state, our source, our resting place - the place we never really leave, never lose. From that place of balance and harmony we venture out into the world knowing that that inseparable space and energy are always within us, and we can call upon these energies whenever, wherever and however they are needed. With the intelligence and clear seeing of Yin and the warmth and compassion of Yang, we understand that the entire world that we move in is not one, not two, and we are empowered to act, to give what is needed when it is needed. We realize that we are inseparable from everything else - that self and other are, again - not one, not two.

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and the time will come when you see we're all one
and life flows on within you and without you
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The Gift

Fell through a trap door and broke my heart - bleeding sadness, joy and big, big love. Poet Bruce Cockburn knows how that is:

these shoes have walked some strange streets
stranger still to come
sometimes the prayers of strangers
are all that keep them from
trying to stay static
something even death can't do
everything is motion
to the motion be true

in this cold commodity culture
where you lay your money down
it's hard to even notice
that all this earth is hallowed ground
harder still to feel it
basic as a breath
love is stronger than darkness
love is stronger than death

the gift keeps on moving
never know where it's going to land
you must stand back and let it
keep on changing hands

hackles rise in anger
heat waves rise in sex
the gift moves on regardless
tying this world to the next
may you never tire of waiting
never feel that life is cheap
may your life be filled with light
except for when you're trying to sleep

the gift keeps on moving
never know where it's going to land
you must stand back and let it
keep on changing hands
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How Do I Look?

This ad is BRILLIANT - for us hard-core Toyota fans ...



You asked for it, you got it... TOYOTA
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A Declaration of Emancipation

"It's a pregnant morning. Full of sweet promise and a dream..."

Some thoughts from Doug Green on change

"In some ways it's like looking at a blank sheet of paper, an empty garden, an untouched block of sculpture wood and not having a friggin' clue what's going to emerge. And being able to laugh at that uncertainty because you just gotta know something good is around the corner. This morning is the uncertainty; the freedom to choose, the terror of choosing, the delight in the lack of boundaries and the wonder in trying to understand how it's all going to turn out."

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Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix
- Christina Baldwin
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And The Winners Are...

four very funny TV commercials....



'specially love the "CHEERING WORKS"
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Just Shut The **** Up

This copyblogger site is so FUN... check out this post entitled:

7 Types of People Everyone Wishes Would Just Shut The **** Up

SURPRISE!! - these folks have something to teach you...

"When you’re worried about other people telling you to STFU, several bad things happen...

• You only speak when you’re totally sure of yourself.
• You carefully measure how everyone will react.
• You make sure nothing you say will cause anyone to think less of you.

You think this is smart. And to a certain extent, it is. If you want to get through life without anyone disliking you, then buttoning your bottom lip, keeping your eyes to yourself, and getting on with your business is the perfect strategy.

But no one tells you that it’s also a good way to spend your life in fear."
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About the Author: Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of
Copyblogger and co-founder of Partnering Profits.
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Box? What Box?

Ever berate yourself for not "thinking outside the box"?

Ten powerful ideas from copyblogger.com about how to soar beyond our self-created obstacles...

Brian Clark: "You create your own imaginary boxes simply by living life and accepting certain things as "real" when they are just as illusory as the beliefs of a paranoid delusional. ...You're already capable of creative thinking at all times, but you have to strip away the imaginary mental blocks that you've picked up along the way to wherever you are today."

Now imagine all those boxes dissolving one by one like fluffy white clouds and our mind expanding further and further into that vast blue sky without limit ...

Feel better?
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nothing is confined except what's in your mind
- Bruce Cockburn
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One For The Money

A local news station was interviewing an 84 year old woman because she had just gotten married - for the fourth time. The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 84, and then asked about her new husband's occupation.

"He's a funeral director", she answered.

"How interesting", the newsman thought. He then asked her if she would mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living. She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect back all those years.

After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she first married a banker when she was in her early 20s, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40s, later on a preacher when in her 60s and now, in her 80s, a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.

"That's easy, son", she smiled.

"I married one for the money... two for the show... three to get ready... and four to go!"

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Sand or Stone?

Two friends were walking through the desert. At some point in the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand,

"Today my best friend slapped me in the face."

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath in the pond. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and was in danger of drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he found a stone on which he wrote,

"Today my best friend saved my life."

The friend who had first slapped and then saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, when I saved you, you wrote on a stone. Why?"

The friend replied,

"When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where winds of forgiveness can carry it away.

"But when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."
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Lose Touch With Your Inner Whining Artist

or, Less Lateral Thinking, More Lateral Action

Well, synchronicity strikes again. Smack on the heels of the last post, this LateralAction Article popped out of cyberspace. It talks about what author Mark McGuinness calls our Inner Whining Artist, that ubiquitous voice that urges us to do just enough to get by, to not ask for too much, to expect the world to adapt to us without any effort on our part, to just go with the flow, ignoring and avoiding the reality that is always right in front of us.

The world - life itself - is more vast, vivid and alive than we can ever imagine, and it wants us to come out and play. But it can only extend the invitation - we have to make a decision to accept the invitation and then step through that door which is always open. We have to be willing to look at how we constantly get in our own way, fooling ourselves into thinking that we're engaging when we're really avoiding, and be willing to go through and beyond our usual comfort zones, our fears and our fantasies. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Mark McGuinness: "You’ll start facing down the fear and taking action, doing the difficult things you’ve been shirking. You’ll start making a difference to your own life and to other people. You’ll make new friends and leave the IWA behind…

"Of course, you don't have to do any of this. You can carry on listening to the IWA and forget you ever read this article. Maybe life will be easier that way.

Your choice."
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I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
he said to me, you must not ask for so much
and a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
she cried to me, hey, why not ask for more
- Leonard Cohen
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Do Or Do Not - There Is No Try

A quote from Yoda in the Star Wars movie

How often have you heard yourself say, "I'm going to try to..." (... get there on time), or "I'm going to try to..." (... be more thoughtful), or "I'm going to try to... (you fill in the blank). How do you feel when you say this? Do you feel committed, enthusiastic, confident? How would you feel if the pilot of an aircraft you were on announced, "I'm going to try to land this plane at the New York Airport in five minutes"?

We sabotage our own intelligence and ability, undermining our chances of accomplishment and the confidence which that brings, when we fall into the mindset of "I'll try" instead of "I will".

Decide what you want to do, announce that to the world, and then DO IT.

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Don't be timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Inner Peace

If you can start the day without caffeine,
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

You must be the family dog.
(and you thought I was gonna go all spiritual on you)
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Amazing Human Tricks

This one just gets better and better...



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Peanuts

I've developed a new philosophy ... I only dread one day at a time.
- Charlie Brown

The way I see it, it doesn't matter what you believe, just so you're sincere.
- Linus
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77 Million Paintings

A two-part video from Brian Eno, self-proclaimed "evangelical atheist"...





We need to prepare for this state of mind that says,
"I'm not in control, and I like it."
- Brian Eno
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The Positive Impact of Negative Space

These are so cool. A link to a graphic design site (thru Dan Pink's Blog):

"All you negative space fans out there (and you know who you are) might like this collection of 25 logos with hidden messages from graphicdesignblog.org. Two of my favorites are below, but the other 23 are also worth your time."


It never ceases to amaze me what the human mind can come up with.

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The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

A LateralAction (Mark McGuinness) interview with Dan Pink

Daniel H. Pink is the author of a trio of provocative, bestselling books on the changing world of work:

Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need

Dan's new book, Drive, is subtitled 'the surprising truth about what motivates us'. It introduces some scientific research that turns business practice on its head and offers all of us a more inspiring and meaningful vision of work, and ultimately of life.

"There's a myth in business that the only way to get people to perform at a high level is with carrots and sticks. But that's just wrong - not wrong morally, but wrong scientifically. Forty years of science tells us that those sorts of motivators - If you do this, then you'll get that - do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. And for creative conceptual work, those if-then motivators usually make things worse."

"The better approach - more enduring and more effective - is motivation built around three ingredients:
~ Autonomy (the desire to direct our own lives)
~ Mastery (the urge to get better at things that matter), and
~ Purpose (the desire to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.)

This guy is really interesting, and his vision of what fires us up will stretch your mind way past some preconceptions you might not know you had.
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You cannot achieve great success until you are faithful to yourself
- Friedrich W. Nietzsche
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12 Things Cats Are Trying To Teach Us

1. Pounce on opportunity. He who hesitates, misses catching the passing lizard.

2. Patience. Infinite patience...

3. Concentration. A cat studying an opportunity just beyond his grasp is the epitome of focused attention. He doesn't even blink as he tunes out all distractions. His body is completely still except for his wildly twitching tail releasing his nervous energy.

4. Nothing is worth disturbing your beauty sleep.

5. Catnap. Even a few moments of shut-eye is refreshing.

6. If you're happy, purr. Show your appreciation by letting people know that you like what they do.

7. Do cat stretches - as we age, gentle stretching is one of the best things we can do for our bodies.

8. Wrestle with your best friend. She likes it when you're playful.

9. Eat when you're hungry and not by the clock.

10. Ask for what you want. If you are lovable and patient, you will probably get it.

11. You can't have everything you want. If you put your claws where they don't belong, you're going to get spanked.

12. Revel in life's simple pleasures. A ball of string is magic. Catnip is heavenly.
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What's New Pussycat?
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Spiritual Transformation Is Not a Psychological Process

Authentic spiritual or mystical transformation is not a psychological process. Mystical teachings go deeper than that - they refer to the nature of consciousness and the structure of the evolving cosmos we are living in.

Many people interpret these teachings as injunctions or instructions, and they can be used in that way, but they really represent a deeper and more subtle dimension of reality itself. And when you begin to look at mystical or enlightenment teachings as laws and subtle structures that actually exist, rather than ideas that someone came up with, your relationship to them changes significantly. You realize that they represent an absolute truth, and you have to work with them. These principles become the path, you walk in a straight line, and you will see development occur. You can’t go wrong.

Andrew Cohen
EnlightenNext Magazine
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Carl Jung on Synchronicity

"Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history." - from Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960).

A friend's recent blogpost got me thinking about beliefs, then a short article from DreamThisDay popped up featuring the above quote by Carl Jung in the context of how even our most firmly held beliefs change over time.

Intrigued by the title of the book, found an interesting piece on synchronicity, a term which not incidentally was coined by Jung to describe what we might call meaningful coincidence. However, Jung felt that where a meaningful relationship obviously exists between events in the apparent absence of any causal connection, a much different principle is operating. This principle, which he called synchronicity, "...compassed his concept of the collective unconscious, in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history - social, emotional, psychological and spiritual."

From the Crystalinks site: "Synchronicities are people, places or events that your soul attracts into your life to help you evolve to higher consciousness or to place emphasis on something going on in your life. The more consciously aware you become of how your soul manifests, the higher your frequency becomes and the faster you manifest positively. Each day of your life encounters meaningful coincidences, synchronicities, that you have attracted - in other words created in the grid of your experiences in the physical."

"Souls create synchronicities, played out in the physical. It is why you are here. It is how our reality works."
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We Don't See Things As They Are

...we see things as we are - Anais Nin.

Anais Nin was a remarkable writer, brutally honest and uncompromising in her portrayals of life and love. I first encountered her during my existential phase in the mid-80s through her novel A Spy In The House of Love. I was delighted and moved today to be reminded of her through a brief article from DreamThisDay.

An excerpt from A Spy In The House of Love:

"She understood why it angered her when people spoke of life as One life. She became certain of myriad lives within herself. Her sense of time altered. She felt acutely and with grief the shortness of life's physical span. Death was terrifyingly near and the journey towards it vertiginous; but only when she considered the lives around her, accepting their time tables, clocks, measurements. Everything they did constricted time. They spoke of one birth, one childhood, one adolescence, one romance, one marriage, one maturity, one aging, one death and then transmitted the monotonous cycle to their children.

"But Sabina, activated by the moon rays, felt germinating in her the power to extend time in the ramifications of a myriad of lives and loves, to expand the journey to infinity, taking immense and luxurious detours as the courtesan depositor of multiple desires. The seeds of many lives, places, of many women in herself were fecundated by the moon rays because they came from that limitless night life which we usually perceive only in our dreams, containing roots reaching for all the magnificence of the past, transmitting the rich sediments into the present, projecting them into the future."
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Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings - AN
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There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - AN
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He Said / She Said

For smart women who need a laugh and guys who can handle it:

He said - I don't know why you wear a bra; you've got nothing to put in it.
She said - You wear pants don't you?

He said - Shall we try swapping positions tonight?
She said - That's a great idea - you stand by the stove & sink while I sit on the sofa, watch TV and fart.

He said - What have you been doing with all the grocery money I gave you?
She said - Turn sideways and look in the mirror!

He said - Why don't women blink during foreplay?
She said - They don't have time.

He said - How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?
She said - I don't know; it has never happened.

He said - Whaddaya mean it's difficult to find men who are sensitive, caring and good-looking?
She said - They already have boyfriends.

He said - What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night?
She said - A widow.

He said - Why are married women heavier than single women?
She said - Single women come home, see what's in the fridge and go to bed. Married women come home, see what's in bed and go to the fridge.
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Bearing Witness

This is a "quote of the week" from Andrew Cohen, who is no stranger to anyone who follows this blog:

"The “rational” values of the culture that we live in may have freed us from the myths of the past, but unfortunately they have also undermined our capacity to have any faith in the unseen metaphysical domains of our innermost interiors. In the ancient premodern world, that unseen dimension was validated by shared myths and religious beliefs and was empowered by the supercharged energy of awakened consciousness in inspired prophets and seers."

"Today we no longer have myths to rely on to validate our spiritual illumination. Together we need to create a post-traditional consensus about the great significance and place of Spirit in the human experience. This has to be generated by those of us who have seen beyond the veil of appearances and have experienced those deeper metaphysical domains to such a profound degree that we’re willing to bear witness in public. But to be taken seriously, we must do so in a way that points us not only beyond the myth and superstition of the ancients but also beyond the naïve idealism predominant in so much of New Age thinking. We must be ruthless in our rationality in order to authentically transmit the light of the trans-rational God in the twenty-first century. This is an enormous task, but our willingness to take it on will slowly but surely make a profound difference."

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The Second Face of God - Part 4

Embracing Hierarchy

Conclusion of the series, The Second Face of God, a dialogue between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, as published in EnlightenNext Magazine.

We left off last time with this quote from Andrew Cohen:

“The structure of the entire cosmos, all the way from its deepest interior to its furthermost exterior, is hierarchical. Hierarchy is actually its fundamental nature at all levels, including consciousness.”

We have seen how the postmodern ego resists embracing the reality of hierarchy as the very nature of the cosmos. While we can accept as true the fact that all life forms evolve from simple to complex through different stages of development, it is infinitely more challenging to recognize that at the level of consciousness, some people are more developed than others. Teaching ourselves to acknowledge, honor and respect authentic differences allows us to connect with Spirit as Other, the second face of God.

Wilber describes two main types of hierarchies: dominator hierarchies, in which one level dominates the other (the caste system is an example of this type) and growth or actualization hierarchies, also called holarchies, where each level is more whole than the previous one. A classic example would be atoms to molecules to cells to organisms - each level transcends and includes the previous level. Similarly, human growth, from individual to societal, also moves through broad stages - egocentric (me), ethnocentric (us), worldcentric (all of us) and cosmocentric (everything) - again transcending but including the previous stage. Egocentric and ethnocentric stages want to dominate; the higher stages want to include and embrace, displaying more love, more care and more consciousness. Once we understand these differences, we realize that when we submit our ego, at whatever stage we are at, we are simply inviting our own next higher stage to manifest.

Wilber: “This hierarchical perspective is not a way to put you down; it’s a way for me to understand my own unfolding, to understand the number of perspectives that I can take into account and, in so doing, to help me grow, develop, evolve. These actualization hierarchies ... are extraordinarily useful because they point out things that we just cannot see on our own.”

But here's the paradox: as Spirit becomes manifest, it embraces a host of different complex forms - as Wilber puts it, “all things are Spirit, but some are more Spirit than others”. Our task is to be able to make distinctions about the nature of difference in manifestation at many different levels. Cohen and Wilber stress the importance of entering into committed relationships with people who we trust and want to learn from - this is how we generate qualities such as humility and respect, qualities associated with the second face of God. We also need to share these kinds of perspectives with groups of like-minded people - inviting what Cohen describes as “a new spiritually enlivened cultural context” in which these qualities can emerge. In the absence of a group or teacher, individually we can contemplate a simple phrase such as “consent to the presence of God” daily, awakening within ourselves higher and deeper aspects of awareness which are in fact representations of the Divine.

Cohen: “The practice of the second face of God is always fundamentally challenging to the ego. But you can tell when people authentically begin to awaken to this dimension of Spirit. Suddenly they begin to express and demonstrate respect, honor, reverence, love and humility. This isn’t a false humility; it’s a natural result of developing a certain kind of introspective capacity - they begin to pay attention to their own motives. They awaken to a sense of higher conscience, a moral context for their own existence. It’s a moral awakening for the postmodern self, because what emerges is an authentic care for a higher context and a higher purpose - a sense of an inherent meaning and glory in life, a respect for other people, and a fundamental respect for that which is higher.”
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Previous posts in this series:
Second Face of God - Part 1
Second Face of God - Part 2
Second Face of God - Part 3
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Andrew Cohen: Guru
(n., Sanskrit): one who teaches spiritual liberation from his or her own direct experience or realization.

Self-described "idealist with revolutionary inclinations" and widely recognized as a defining voice in the emerging field of evolutionary spirituality, Cohen has developed an original teaching for the twenty-first century which he calls Evolutionary Enlightenment. He is also the founder and editor in chief of EnlightenNext magazine.

Ken Wilber: Pandit
(n., Sanskrit): a scholar, one who is deeply proficient and immersed in spiritual wisdom.

Self-described "defender of the dharma, an intellectual samurai", Wilber is one of the most highly regarded philosophers alive today, and his work offers a comprehensive and original synthesis of the world's great psychological, philosophical and spiritual traditions. His books include A Brief History of Everything and Integral Spirituality.

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Immerse yourself in the complete collection of Guru
& Pandit dialogues at enlightennext.org/gurupandit
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I smile when I'm angry, I cheat and I lie

I do what I have to do to get by

but I know what is wrong and I know what is right

and I'd die for the truth

in my secret life

- Leonard Cohen
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A Mathematical Formula for Success

We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give more than 100%. What does it really mean to give more than 100%? How would one accomplish that?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these troubling questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

then:
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
and
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
but
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

Amazing indeed! Let's take it further...

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Knowledge and Hard Work will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Bullshit and Ass-Kissing that will put you over the top.

Live long and prosper
- Mr. Spock
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Be Careful What You Wish For

A married couple in their early 60s were celebrating their 40th Wedding Anniversary in a quiet, romantic little restaurant. Suddenly, a tiny fairy appeared at their table. She said, "For being such an exemplary married couple and for being loving to each other for all this time, I will grant you each a wish."

The wife responded, "Oh, I have always wanted to travel around the world with my darling husband." The fairy waved her magic wand and - poof! - two tickets for the Queen Mary II appeared in her hands.

The husband thought for a moment and said, "Well, this is all very romantic, but an opportunity like this will never come again. I'm sorry my love, but my wish is to have a wife 30 years younger than me."

The wife and the fairy were deeply disappointed, but a wish is a wish. So the fairy waved her magic wand and poof! - the husband instantly became 93 years old.

The moral of the story: Most fairies are female ...

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The Second Face of God - Part 3

The Evolution of Spirit

Part 3 of The Second Face of God, a conversation between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, as published in EnlightenNext Magazine.

We have seen how postmodern culture has reinforced the conviction that the individual self is the center of the universe and that our thoughts and opinions are the ultimate truth. This mindset has made it difficult for us to accept, let alone surrender to, the possibility that there is something that is higher, more evolved, than ME.

Let's again join Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber as they discuss how the evolution of spirituality and religion through their different stages has failed to keep pace with our rapidly changing Western culture and consciousness.
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Wilber: Spirituality, or religion, has progressed over time through stages of growth. We can use Jean Gebser's developmental terms for the different levels: archaic, magic, mythic, mental-rational, pluralistic and integral. Like individuals and cultures, spiritual understanding evolves through those stages ... and at each of these stages, there are expressions of the three faces of God, of Spirit in first, second and third person. But in the West, the second-person view of Spirit developed from archaic to magic to mythic - with mythic being represented essentially by the Old and New Testaments - and there it got stuck. So for most people in the West today, Spirit in second person has become stunted and identified merely with God the Father, the old man with a white beard in the sky giving these dogmatic mythic commands.

We drastically missed the chance to have our larger cultural backgrounds of religion and education give us a head start on ego-transcendence. Even with the influx of Eastern traditions, people were attracted to third-person and first-person expressions of Spirit. They didn't go for second person because they didn't want to fundamentally submit. And they didn't know how; they didn't have role models for it.

Cohen: Yes. What it actually means to embrace the second face of God in a post-postmodern context is new territory... I've noticed that often people can begin to embrace some kind of feeling connection with whatever their own experience of God as Other is, but they still do it from the safe vantage point of the ego. Or, they may turn to ancient practices that are not necessarily appropriate for our time and culture. Individuals at the postmodern stage may feel okay taking up traditional practices, but that may not be the most authentic way to embrace a second-person relationship with Spirit at their own stage of development.

Wilber: You're right; we've spotted the problem but that is far, far removed from solving it. Even individuals who've realized they need to practice Spirit in second person too often go back to the only practices that are available, which unfortunately don't work.

Cohen: Because the practices are from an earlier stage of development, they feel inauthentic.

Wilber: Yes; they're reinforcing inauthentic modes that are pre-egoic rather than trans-egoic. Guru yoga, done correctly, is one way a student faces God as Other. The guru is apparently other - his or her consciousness is other than mine. Therefore, I need to submit to that guru, but I need to do it in very specific and careful ways. In authentic guru yoga, there is a very profound way of getting deeply in touch with the root of awareness and finding that it is One, that "my master is myself", and that is a fundamental way to transcend ego. When I realize a fundamental identity with the master, I am liberated from the master in a certain sense. But that's very different from how people imagine it.

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Next time the Conclusion: Embracing Hierarchy.

Andrew Cohen: "I've thought a lot about what it means for the postmodern self to embrace the second face of God without having to accept some outmoded traditional structure or mythic belief. And I think it boils down to something simple yet profound. It means embracing the recognition that the structure of the entire cosmos, all the way from its deepest interior to its furthermost exterior, is hierarchical. Hierarchy is actually its fundamental nature at all levels, including consciousness."
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Previous posts in this series:
The Second Face of God - Part 1
The Second Face of God - Part 2
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The Caring Husband

Better Late Than Never

A little known fact:

The first testicular guard "cup" was used in hockey in 1874; the first helmet was used in 1974.

So it would seem that it took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.
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The Second Face of God - Part 2

The Postmodern Predicament

Part 2 of The Second Face of God, a dialogue between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, published in EnlightenNext.

In Part 1 Cohen and Wilber introduced us to the three faces of God (as Self, as Other, and as the Cosmic Process itself) and laid the groundwork for our exploration into the often overlooked significance of the second aspect, God as Other. They talked about how, despite the many spiritual practices we can engage in, unless we can allow the existence of something beyond, and higher than, our individual selves and cultivate a genuine relationship with that, we will remain imprisoned within the cocoon of our self-centered egos.

In this section they provide a context in which this self-contraction develops and how it can become, as Cohen puts it, "the most fundamental obstacle to higher development."
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Cohen: I think this applies particularly to our generation and our generation's children who have grown up in the Western world in the last half-century. For many years I have been saying that the postmodern narcissistic separate self-sense is the most fundamental obstacle to higher development. Many people thought that I basically didn't get it, that this was an outmoded way of looking at things. But you only really discover what an enormous problem the narcissistic self-contraction is in relationship to how profound your interest is in transcending it. If you have no interest in transcending it, it doesn't seem to be a big problem. But if you authentically want to try to get on the other side of it, you discover that it's actually quite significant.

This is a delicate subject because the postmodern variation of the ego is, on one hand, a great gift to the evolutionary process, but on the other hand, it's a significant obstacle. In a positive sense, our ego, our capacity for individuality, is what makes it possible to become an integrally informed, evolutionarily enlightened human being. The more profound our individuation, the more powerfully Spirit can shine through us. So being profoundly individuated is not a bad thing. It's a gift of evolution, a gift of God, if you want to put it in theological terms. It's just that our narcissistic identification with the separate self, outside of any higher context, creates a big problem. The ego begins to see itself as the center of the universe, and the whole process inverts upon itself. Everything turns upside down.

When speaking about this problem, I always try to put it in this context and to make it clear that it's nobody's fault, because culturally we have been conditioned to be narcissists. I grew up in a secular family where there was no higher context for my or anyone else's existence. The basic message my parents and teachers repeatedly gave me was, "Sweetheart, you should do whatever is going to make you happy." So I was conditioned to see life as a vehicle for my pleasure, my happiness and my success - well-trained to be an absolutely self-centered human being. And I am not the only one. There are millions of us.

Wilber: That's right - the "me" generation. The downside of the [postmodern] relativistic, pluralistic stage is that it doesn't allow any truths outside of my own egoic truth. Postmodernity says, "What's true for me is true for me, and you have no right to challenge it." So the ego is supreme in its castle of "what is true for me."

Now this perspective has a certain relative truth to it, but it also has a magnificent falsehood to it ... the downside is that if nobody can say what is truth, then nobody can correct my egoic disposition. There is simply nothing that's going to let me grow, that's going to help me get over myself, that's going to point to a higher, truer, or more valuable stance than whatever I just happen to hold by whim. And this has been a problem in philosophy, in sociology and in spirituality.

Cohen: We are at a very interesting point in the evolution of culture. On one hand, Spirit has the capacity to shine through us in ways that may be unprecedented because of how highly integrated and sophisticated our individual self-sense has become. But the big problem is that our awareness has gotten stuck on and overidentified with this separate self and lost in its own separate world of extreme narcissism. The reason this is so tragic is that it makes it impossible for us to participate in life in the deepest and most profound way. To make a cultural revolution happen, awareness has to be liberated from narcissistic self-fixation so that it can overflow and discover who it really is as the Ground of Being and as the evolutionary impulse.

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Watch this space for Part 3 - The Evolution of Spirit
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If you like this thread and where it's going, here are some related RoadKill posts you might enjoy:

Sept. 9 - The Second Face of God - Part 1
July 24 - The Faces of Spirit
June 22 - Spirit is Higher
June 17 - Evolutionary Enlightenment 101
June 3 - Freedom in the Face of Fear
March 23 - Redefining Enlightenment For Our Time
March 21 - Whatever Happened to Truth?

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love to infinity and find me there
love to eternity and I will be there
love to the boundless corners of the Kosmos
and all will be shown to you
- Ken Wilber
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The Second Face of God - Part 1

Some highlights of the latest conversation between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, reported in EnlightenNext Magazine, where they discuss why having a relationship to a transcendent God is the only way to bring the postmodern ego to its knees.

From the introduction by Andrew Cohen:

" So a couple of years ago, when my good friend Ken Wilber began to write and speak about what he called the three faces of God, I found the distinctions he was making both thrilling and clarifying. He articulated and put into a simple framework the different dimensions of the Divine that I had encountered. God as our deepest Self, God as the great all-knowing Other, and God as the entire cosmic Process. And he connects these three very different expressions of Spirit to the three fundamental perspectives that integral theory is built upon: first person, second person and third person, or I, You/We and It (see July 24/09 RoadKill Post). Spirit or God can be looked at through all of these perspectives which (as Ken often points out) correspond to the perspectives found in all major languages.

"First-person Spirit", Ken explains, "is the great I AM, the pure radical subjectivity or witness in every sentient being. Spirit in second person is the great Thou, something that is immeasurably greater than you could ever possibly be in your wildest imagination, something before which surrender and devotion and submission and gratitude are the only appropriate responses. And Spirit in third person is the great web of life, the Great Perfection of everything that is arising."

Wilber: Spirit in second-person is extremely important because it is spirituality in its relational form. It's Spirit in a form that can be communicated with.

Cohen: ...you can have an experience of the first face of God as the absolute subject or consciousness itself, but the ego doesn't necessarily have to bend its knee. And one can have an awakening to the third face of God as this Kosmic evolutionary process, and the ego still doesn't have to bend its knee. But when we enter into the subtle or not-so-subtle paradoxical dualism of having an "I/Thou" relationship with Spirit, the ego suddenly has no choice but to bend its knee. That's why, in a truly integral expression and understanding of Spirit, unless the second face of God is given quite a bit of importance, no matter how many experiences of Spirit as absolute subject or Spirit as Kosmic process an individual may have, the postmodern, narcissistic ego can remain firmly behind the wheel. Ultimately, to become an integrally and evolutionarily enlightened individual, the ego is going to have to come down at least on one knee, if not both.

Wilber: Absolutely. It is indeed the easiest thing in the world for the ego, the separate self, the self-contraction, to take up practices that deal with the first perspective of I-AM-ness and the third perspective of the great web of life, because neither of these ultimately demands a conscious surrender of ego ... But when you are orienting to Spirit in second person - to some aspect of Spirit that is Other to this separate self - that is what really breaks the ego down, what forces it to submit its own self-contracting ways. So the integral approach is to include all three of these perspectives ... I've found that since I introduced that notion, so many Buddhists in particular have come up and said guiltily, "I was practicing and practicing but ego was still intact because I didn't really think there was anything fundamentally greater than my own ego."

Coming soon - Part 2, The Post-Modern Predicament
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The Soul of the World

from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

"An army is coming," the boy said. "I had a vision."

"The desert fills men's hearts with visions," the camel driver answered.

But the boy told him about the hawks: that he had been watching their flight and had suddenly felt himself to have plunged to the Soul of the World.

The camel driver understood what the boy was saying. He knew that any given thing on the face of the earth could reveal the history of all things. One could open a book to any page, or look at a person's hand; one could turn a card, or watch the flight of the birds ... whatever the thing observed, one could find a connection with his experience of the moment. Actually, it wasn't that those things, in themselves, revealed anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could find a means of penetration to the Soul of the World.

everything is understood
and apparent phenomena are all the books one needs
- Sadhana of Mahamudra
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Intuition

from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

"... The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything because it's all written there."

If you want to find the meaning
stop chasing after so many things
- Ryokan
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Relax And Pay Attention

Let us allow the Soul of the World to fulfil its mission, and if we can't help, the best way to collaborate is to pay attention to the simple things in life, the sunset, the people in the street, the reading of a book.

Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light
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The Alchemist

Prologue from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Translated by Clifford E. Landers

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

"Why do you weep?", the goddesses asked.

"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.

"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."

"But ... was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.

"Who better than you to know that?" the goddesses said in wonder. "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!"

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:

"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."

"What a lovely story," the alchemist thought.

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Zero-Based Gratitude

From Jonathan Lockwood Huie's
Insights for Living Simply An Inspired Life

Perhaps you have heard of zero-based budgeting as a technique for governments, businesses, and occasionally individuals. Zero-based budgeting is in contrast to traditional incremental budgeting. In incremental budgeting, one starts with the budget for the last year, or other period, and prepares a budget for the next period based on the budget for the last period - incorporating whatever increases, or very occasionally decreases, are deemed appropriate.

Zero-based budgeting begins with a base-line of no expenditures, rather than the base-line of last year's expenditures. Each and every proposed expense must be justified on its own merits rather that falling back on the argument that it was in the last year's budget, and that everybody expects and demands it.

Most people's gratitude is incremental gratitude. If they receive a raise, a bigger house, a third car, a new love interest, or a healthy new baby, they are grateful. If they lose their job, are forced to downsize, have a tiff with their spouse, or have an illness in the family, they are disappointed and angry. Why disappointed and angry? Because they have not been blessed with as much today as they were yesterday.

Suppose our gratitude could be zero-based gratitude. With zero-based gratitude, we would be grateful for everything we had each day - regardless of whether it was more or less than yesterday. With zero-based gratitude, I can be grateful for a warm comfortable one-bedroom apartment, even if I had a four bedroom house yesterday. I can be grateful for being able to walk, even if I could run yesterday. I can be grateful for all the people, the love, the food, the shelter, the services, the health, that I am blessed with today, regardless of what I had yesterday. With zero-based gratitude, I can be grateful each day for the gift of life itself.

Further reading:
Make a Gratitude List
Pay It Forward - as an Expression of Universal Gratitude
Celebrating Rainbows and Butterflies - the Small Miracles of Our Life

The only difficult part of this practice is remembering to do it...
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Warrior of the Light

Paulo Coelho (Rio de Janeiro, 1947) prior to his career as a best-selling author, was a playwright, theatre director, hippie, and popular songwriter for some of Brazil’s most famous pop music stars, including Elis Regina and Raul Seixas. Shortly after, he worked as a journalist and as a television playwright.
In 1986 Paulo Coelho walked along the Road of Santiago, an ancient Spanish pilgrimage. He would later describe this experience in The Pilgrimage, published in 1987. The following year, with his second book The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho has become one of the most widely read contemporary authors, an authentic publishing phenomenon - number 1 best seller in 29 countries.
Critics have specially praised his poetic, realistic and philosophical style, and "the symbolic language that does not speak to our brains, but to our hearts". His storytelling has the power to inspire nations.
Paulo Coelho is Special Advisor to the UNESCO programme "Spiritual Convergences and Intercultural Dialogues".

Warrior of the Light is his website, where he publishes short pieces such as this one:

The Four Forces

Father Alan Jones says that building our soul requires Four Invisible Forces, namely love, death, power and time. It is necessary to love because we are loved by God. It is necessary to be conscious of death in order to understand life better. One has to fight in order to grow - but without falling into the trap of the power that we obtain in doing so, because we know that such power is worth nothing. And lastly, it is necessary to accept that our soul – although eternal – is at this moment caught in the web of time, with all its opportunities and limitations.

First Force: Love

Rabbi Iaakov’s wife was always looking for an excuse to argue with her husband. Iaakov never answered her provocations.

Until one night when, during a dinner with some friends, the rabbi had a ferocious argument with his wife to the surprise of all at table.

“What happened?” they asked. “Why did you break your habit of never answering?”

“Because I realized that what bothered my wife most was the fact that I remained silent. Acting in this way, I remained far from her emotions. My reaction was an act of love, and I managed to make her understand that I heard her words."

Second Force: Death

As soon as he died, Juan found himself in a very beautiful place, surrounded by all the comfort and beauty that he had dreamed of.

A figure dressed in white came up to him and said, “You are entitled to anything you want.”

Enchanted, Juan did everything he had dreamed of during life. After many years of pleasure, he sought out the figure in white. He said that he had experienced everything and that now he needed a little work to make him feel useful.

“That’s the only thing I cannot get for you,” said the figure in white.

“But I’ll spend eternity dying of boredom! I’d much rather be in hell!”

“And where do you think you are?”

Third Force: Power

“I’ve spent a good part of the day thinking about things that I should not think about, desiring things that I should not desire, planning to do things that I should not do.”

The master pointed to a plant and asked the disciple if he knew what it was.

“It’s a belladonna. It can kill you if you eat the leaves. But it can’t kill you just by looking at it. Likewise, negative desires can cause no harm – if you don’t let yourself be seduced by them.”

Fourth Force: Time

A carpenter and his apprentices were traveling through the province of Qi in search of building materials. They saw a giant tree; five men holding hands could not encompass its girth, and its crown reached almost to the clouds.

“Let's not waste our time with this tree,” said the master carpenter. “It would take us forever to cut it down. If we wanted to make a ship out of that heavy trunk, the ship would sink. If we tried to use it to build a roof, the walls would have to be specially reinforced.”

The group continued on its way. One of the apprentices remarked, “Such a big tree and no use to anyone!”

“That's where you're wrong,” said the master carpenter. “The tree was true to its own destiny. If it had been like all the others, we would have cut it down. But because it had the courage to be different, it will remain alive and strong for a long time.”

Warrior of the Light, a http://www.paulocoelho.com.br/ publication.
Thanks also to David B. (Signs of the Times) for the link)

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.
- Thomas Moore
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