Posts Tagged ‘enlightenment’
Rain Waves
I picked a good day to go to the movies yesterday, and not just because of the discounted tickets on a Tuesday. Overnight Monday we received such a thunderous downpour I fully expected to find washouts left and right. That didn’t turn out to be the case but then the wave after wave of sometimes frightfully heavy downbursts interspersed among periods of really rainy rain all day had local dry creeks flowing like rivers by the time I returned home.
I drove to Hudson on my own to see, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The ticket cost me $5.50. A medium bag of popcorn costs $6.25.
On my drive to the theater, I found myself getting closer and closer to a wall of heavy rain ahead. Making my way inside before the heaviest rain fell, I headed directly to the restroom after purchasing my ticket. This movie is 3 hours and 26 minutes long. Need I say more?
The quality of the film lives up to the skill and experience of the people who created it. It feels wrong to find myself appreciating a film about such diabolic events in U.S. history. I’m glad the true story of multiple murders to steal the wealth of an Osage family who profited from oil on their reservation at the turn of the 20th century is getting told. Hopefully, it will keep alive a historical truth that plenty of people would rather not acknowledge.
There was a point during the movie when the roar of the deluge outside pounding on the roof of the theater briefly wrenched the audience’s attention from the cinematic world and then another time a little later when dramatic thunder claps didn’t seem to fit with the action on screen. It took some thinking to separate the two events going on at the same time.
It also takes thinking to comprehend the violence occurring in the world today is tragically similar to countless human casualties perpetrated throughout time. It seems hard to believe the human race hasn’t been able to grow more enlightened than what is represented by deadly conflicts that continue to exist to this day.
Those of us beaming waves of love to the world are going to need to up our game somehow to create hope that a tide can be turned with unprecedented global results toward ending human atrocities.
Imagine beams of love that rain down in waves able to wrench our attention from killing “others” and overflow hearts with visions of peace.
Amen.
.
.
Second Greatest
As I stepped out our front door to get my shovels for clearing off the deck yesterday morning, I heard the sound of a car engine in front of our garage doors. I came around the corner to find a gentleman walking around his car and we exchanged greetings. He said he lived just five miles away near the Rush River and added that our place looked really beautiful.
Dawn, Sunday morning.
Then he said he wanted to tell me about three things in the Bible… I politely interrupted him to let him know he didn’t need to finish. He asked how long we’d lived here and we shared a few more tidbits about ourselves. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to do a little proselytizing, myself.
I said that I am all about love. He lit up and said love was what Christianity was about. My response is that love is what all religions are about.
My second greatest accomplishment after taking action to treat my depression is my enlightenment about embracing love as the single most important intention humans should focus on every single day in our thoughts and actions as we navigate our way through life. Love for other people, ALL people, animals, nature, the planet, ourselves, the universe, and mysteries in planes of existence we can’t even prove exist.
When you allow yourself to truly love, it makes it easier to forgive.
Love is magical.
Yesterday morning was a foggy one. It was a freezing fog, actually. While feeding the horses and cleaning up, I made my way in and out of the barn many times, getting their feed pans, filling bags of hay, getting the wheelbarrow and scooper, and retrieving their empty feed pans. Each time I came out of the barn, the fog had increased.
Dusk, yesterday afternoon.
First, I couldn’t see the evergreen trees across the road. Then, I couldn’t see the road. Eventually, I couldn’t see anything around us. It didn’t last long but it was around long enough for delicate ice crystals to form on everything the fog touched. I loved it!
While I was visiting with the guy in front of our garage, the icy crystals started snowing down off tree branches all at once. It created a fairy tale scene that made it seem like we were in a snow globe ornament.
At noon, I went down to the barn and worked on freeing the big sliding doors from ice that formed after the last storm of freezing drizzle and rain/drizzle/snow. A little calcium chloride helped get the job done.
With our winter hours, I’ve been feeding horses in the morning before the sun comes up and in the afternoon after the sun has gone down.
I sure love the views we get to enjoy.
.
.
Outstretched Arms
As if reaching for a hug or stretching to embrace the world before me, arms wide and heart open, I stand and gaze up toward the sky with lyrics from all my favorite songs strolling around in my increasingly foggy memory bank.
Can it be so hard
To love yourself without thinking
Someone else holds a lower card?
Free to Be, 1977 Bruce Cockburn
.
Holding a sense of wonder has got to be one of the great secrets of living an enlightened life. Hah! Brings to mind the great darts episode of Ted Lasso:
“Be curious, not judgemental.”
In which the main character apparently misattributes the quote to Walt Whitman.
What does the world hold for me today? It’s mostly blue sky now but that’s changed twice already since I woke up a half-hour later than usual this morning. As I was getting Delilah into her harness for her morning stroll through our woods, the sun was shining brightly into our front entrance. I grabbed my sunglasses and off we went into the not-too-cold morning air.
Halfway through the woods on our way around toward the barn to feed the horses, I fumbled to stash my sunglasses in a vest pocket. The sky was filled with clouds.
Now the clouds have disappeared again, about as fast as they had shown up a couple of hours ago.
Last night’s weather forecast for today promised high winds but they haven’t kicked up here yet. I’ve left the barn doors closed in anticipation of avoiding the dusty turmoil that blustery days can kick up in there.
Here’s to being open to whatever insights the universe happens to provide for our further enlightenment on a sunny Sunday with no firm commitments demanding our time or attention.
I’m feeling a certain pull to lay down and stare up at the clouds while listening to a random shuffle of my music library.
Imagine that.
.
.
RS Interview 3
Yes, there was more. The Relative Something interview with *The* John W. Hays meandered into the subjects of climate change and mental health. Are they related?…
RS: That’s enough of the namby-pamby rambling about pandemics and pets.
JWH: Uh-oh.
RS: What is it about your fascination with the weather every day?
JWH: You tell me?
I know, I know, I talk about the weather a lot. Doesn’t everybody? I mean, it SNOWED here yesterday! How can you avoid talking about that?
RS: Reading what you write, one might get the sense you are not a climate change denier.
JWH: [sarcastically] Well, it still gets really cold here and snows, so global warming might just be a hoax.
Some things in this world change gradually. I have been witnessing the constant increasing trend of fossil-fuel-emission-induced impact for my entire life. There were predictions made 30 years ago about the calamities the world is experiencing. Melting polar regions, rising seas, high-temperature records increasing, droughts, fires, floods, increasing intensity of storms. Honestly, simply seeing a graphic display of the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the industrial age compared to hundreds of thousands of years before should be enough for anyone to comprehend the reality. Human influence is changing the planet earth. What is the motivation to claim otherwise? At the highest levels of governance, corporations, and wealthy investors, I propose the motivation is financial. I can’t get my head around how anyone would be willing to risk our space ship for their greed to have more for themselves.
RS: Almost sounds like a mental health problem.
JWH: You brought it up. Dysfunctions of mental health could probably be viewed as the root cause of the majority of world problems. Wait… is stupidity classified as a mental illness? Sorry. Although, for me, education was a huge part of my success in dealing with my depression. My years of dysfunctional thinking were turned around in months after learning what was going on in my mind. Obviously, mental health issues are complex. In terms of addictions, we can educate someone about the harmful effects of smoking, but how many times has that knowledge been useless in getting someone to quit? Same challenge for every other mental affliction, I suppose. There are factors that go much deeper than just knowing. Maybe, more than simply having knowledge, there is an aspect of enlightenment involved.
Our thinking is intertwined with our physical chemistry. Our bodies are manufacturing and distributing mood-altering drugs. Our physical bodies are influenced by invisible forces around us. Moods are contagious. A well-educated person can be intelligent about a lot of subjects, yet be oblivious to how their anger is triggering chemicals in their body and how their angst is triggering people around them. That gap in perception can be narrowed by becoming more enlightened. More self-aware.
Increased self-awareness helps to open up the capacity to become more globally aware. An enlightened view would encompass equal cognizance of both self and others.
I don’t know if it’s obvious where I am going with this, but it has to do with love.
RS: Love seems like a worthy topic!
to be continued…
.
.
Alternative Route
I don’t know how long it will last, but on Monday I stumbled upon an alternate route to the “classic editor” I prefer and have used successfully for years prior to the so-called great [cough] “block editor” that became the WordPress default as of October.
Aah, the good old days.
This week we are enjoying an alternative October in the form of very summer-like high temperatures outside. It is strange to have the hours of daylight rapidly changing when the weather is so warm. The two phenomena don’t usually happen together to this extreme. Isn’t it odd to have weather behaving wacky at this point in the history of the planet?
Oh, I guess it’s not odd at all. Scientists have been predicting this for decades. Gee, if we don’t make significant changes in our reliance on fossil fuels, icebergs in the polar regions will melt, weather patterns of storms, droughts, floods, fires, and temperatures will become more extreme, and geographies and economies will be at risk.
Throw in a model of a global virus pandemic at the same time and you have the makings for a real stomach churner.
I suppose the insidious rise of extreme ideologies in multiple nations around the world touting white supremacy or fear of any diversity at all could be the icing on this growing mess of craziness.
The scourge of social media platforms enhancing the idiocy and ignorance could be viewed as the sprinkles on that icing.
Might there be an alternative route to love and enlightenment awaiting discovery by a collective of seekers?
It seems to me that a fair number of individuals find ways to grasp that golden ring, but can diverse populations of multiple nations ever make the bold leap en masse?
Cyndie and I practice an art of recovery from angst-producing situations that our horses helped to teach us by their ability to swiftly return to grazing calmly after a disturbance. When things appear to be spinning out of control, the vocalized phrase, “get back to grazing” helps us to put things in a healthier perspective.
It’s a way of paying heed to the bigger picture. Playing the long game.
Things might be out of control right now, but we don’t need to dwell in the worst of it all.
What I am wrestling with lately is the challenge of claiming my peace of mind in an immediate moment when so many others are enduring terrible suffering.
One alternate solution I experiment with is to fully embrace my good fortune of knowing infinite love, mindfully doing so in proxy for those who are not able.
To the innocents who have been unjustly confined, to those who have become prisoners of their own hate, to people who are victims of every manner of social injustices, I send love into the world in your honor.
It’s an alternate route that I dream someday might grow to become the main highway for all people of the world.
.
.
Can’t Breathe
Anger boiling over in the form of roiling balls of flame with no visible public servants on hand to contain the rage as daytime turns into night makes for a disturbing meditation in the moments before nodding off to sleep.
It is hard to breathe through our masks.
It is hard to breathe through the smoke.
It is hard to breathe when being choked.
It is hard to contend with the fact that all I was going to do was breathe in our forest air yesterday and beam love to the world, yet the Pentagon needed to put military police on alert as protesters ignored curfew orders and ignited numerous new fires.
Morning turns the tide and reasonable people emerge with brooms and trash bags to pick up debris in an attempt to hasten the healing of the damage done overnight.
It’s an interesting dynamic to watch the venting of angst built up over multiple generations and centuries of time followed by the immediate effort to clean up the present damage which will actually require generations of repair to remedy.
How many years of treating people of color (and women and LGBTQ and homeless and impoverished and mentally impaired human beings) with equal respect to their white counterparts will be needed to complete healing that is the dream of healthy well-meaning communities of enlightened citizens of the world?
I’m not sure I can breathe that long.
.
.
Other Places
Some days I find solace in escaping within a visualization of a pleasant memory. It’s a version of filling this moment with a moment that I’ve borrowed from another moment.
Today, I am breathing deep and remembering when I stood high in the Himalayan mountains over ten years ago.
That place is a very long distance away from where I live, but it is as close as a thought that I am able to recall at will.
Focusing on such single visualizations tends to discount all the sundry details that came before and after that moment, in something of a selective memory. The effort involved in arriving to that place was significant and tends to repress the likelihood of my ever returning, despite a lingering urge to be able to stand there once again.
It makes the mental return visits all the more precious.
Here’s to enlightenment.
Om Mani Padme Hum…
.
.
.
Empowering Love
Editorial cartoon by James T. Pendergrast for Rolling Stone, June 2002
.
.
.
Imagine replacing the negative with the opposite:
.
Let fearlessness enhance enlightenment to fill our crucibles with love!
Let’s carefully teach everyone, before it’s too late, to love all the people, “all our relations” on this planet, fearlessly.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 