What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. People can and do change over the smallest increments of time. We must remember that every time people come together they are meeting strangers.
Moreover, every relationship is composed of the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires and mutual human-life understandings.
One sure way to eliminate the burden of these ‘complexities and changes’ is to just ignore them. Build up a buffer or barrier between you and the ‘complexities and changes’ and make up a personal rule on how you will handle those circumstances in the future. Maybe a form of violence that basically attacks the intruder who brings ‘complexities and changes’ is in order.
If something seems too difficult to understand, just rebel against it.
Leave ‘understanding’ to those who are willing – and care enough about the subject at hand – to pursue it.
Up is down. Wrong is right. Captivity is freedom. Imprisoning ourselves by not forgiving. Trapped in a life that we call our own, but one that does a huge injustice in exemplifying who we really are.
Who was Jack anyway? It didn’t matter then. Shoot! I was going to soar like Superman in a few days.
We knew Magic back then. We knew Magic.
There was a magic mill that was left on and that made the sea salty. Magic potions. Mansions on mountain tops. Snowmen that became real. Talk to birds, read messages in the clouds, knowing all about construction by pushing a dump truck the size of your hand through the sand.
But tragedy strikes. Santa disintegrates in a heartbeat. And like dominoes, so do all our other heroes. We were growing up. Maturing, Fitting in. Learning . . . what others wanted us to learn, because the ‘others’ were jealous of our freedom, our disrespect for ‘what had to be’, our youth. And most of all, their sadness for what they let die in themselves.
That scenario was, and still is, the only way . . . put fissures in the Magic then chip away at it until all that is left are memories. That wonderful sensation of bringing OUR unimaginable thoughts, ideas and pictures together for OUR creation – gone.
After every moment of our lives, we are a little further away from who we really are, or better, who we really were.
There is still ‘silence’, but with the all-important question . . .
‘Can we be silent AND forget about the impact of all the ways our freedoms were taken from us?‘
Let’s meet halfway up one of Jack’s beanstalks, where our sole purpose will be to . . . remember our Magic.
The grass begs to feel the bottom of your feet shuffling along, and the wind yearns to blow through your hair. Your sheets, blankets and pillows can’t wait to comfort you again.
Food is desirous of being prepared and eaten. The chair wants to support you, sunglasses want to protect your eyes, soap and a shower want to cleanse you, the heater wants to warm you, the A/C wants to cool you.
Books, trees, houses; everything we can see offers a special gift for our senses to enjoy.
But look into someone else’s eyes, past their eyes, deeper, where things are spooky. A place where there is just ‘wonder’. A dreamland of the totally unknown.
Neither person knowing what will be said next, or with what accompanying emotion. Two spiritual playgrounds, trying to make sense of each other. Two mysteries in search of meaning.
Two matrices of incompleteness – searching for a clue, a stepping stone, a small but essential piece of the puzzle. Where even a mistake is welcome.
At that point you begin to take ownership of time.
You realize that you are always sharing your time, even if it is just with your present thoughts.
Your time takes on an aura of sacredness, and that sacredness monitors everything you take into confidence; people, ideas, actions. Everything is scrutinized to assure your now cherished time contains no contamination.
There is a heightened respect for silence when it is coupled with purity.
When you begin to ‘approve’ of the time you spend in different activities, the ‘quality of your moments’ becomes the gauge as to how you are living your life.
Your time, is your life. Monitor it spectacularly.
It’s a glimpse of what we should understand thoroughly.
It’s a look into a classroom where the teacher is showing an example of exquisite PEACE. A peace we recognize instinctively, but that is where the learning ends, with recognition. Natural reasoning left us on our seventh birthday.
We understand ‘peace’ but only in its most primitive form.
Once upon a time, we slept as individuals should sleep. Exploring mysteries, tasting sweetness, with moonlight in our eyes,
Kitty, in her reverie is saying to herself, ‘Thank you. Thank you that I get it. Thank you that I understand. Thank you that everything is mine. Thank you!’
Luxuriating – while immersed in the highest form of wisdom and gentleness. Understanding all forms and nuances of peace.
Teach us, Kitty. Please, teach us.
(If you haven’t stared at the photo above, this message will be of no value to you.)
Stay in your own lane. Trust in that lane. Make it perfect. Get rid of what’s not working. Cherish what is working, and add to that.
If you love something, get more of that. And, go all the way! Remember that moment of euphoria you had years ago? Seek to duplicate that. Then wonder about circumstances having even more potency.
Imagine the highest point of your rainbow. What’s above that? Get comfortable pondering your Land of Fantasy. Each day, mentally push your thoughts up a notch. Feel the Nothingness, the grandeur, the unknown. Go, where you’ve never gone before.
There are no secrets. Try something; a sunrise, a cruise, music, absence of everything, a special chair, blanket. Get out of the way of judgment. Just allow. If something seems it has more impact than the others, refine it. Make that concept your own. Make whatever it is, a little boat. Then float around in it. Throw away the oars. Go wherever it takes you.
Gently. Majestically. Down the stream.
Inner peace and tranquility . . . the ultimate fun.
Your most familiar street where everything you know is located; shops, grocery store, friends, restaurants, churches, beaches, strategies.
All is well on this street. Nothing changes. It is comfortable.
But an occurrence happens and the convenience of that street no longer can satisfy new needs. A ‘hard’ change is not the answer; trying to make everything and everybody on your street conform to your advanced wishes.
There’s the ‘Soft Approach’.
Take a peek down another street. Not as attractive, fewer establishments, more unknowns. It’s equipped with novel ideas from new ways of thinking. Imagine that.
Life is not about winning battles . . .
just turning away and choosing to look in another direction.
Arriving. Usually an easily known happening. You know the place, the people, and they know you. Hugs abound, pets join in. Everything is familiar.
But not so with the Infinite. There is no ‘place’, no people, no familiarity. No welcoming hugs to identify safety or security. Actually, it seems the exact opposite of ‘arriving’ is true with the Infinite.
There are no welcome mats, no puppies jumping up and down because of their elation to see you, Nothing. An invisible wonderland of silence.
It is a personal refuge of sorts. Indeed – a getaway of the highest order.
Is there an ‘arrival’? No one has a clue. All of us have had some mysterious event(s) occur in our lives. Are they ‘arrivals’? No idea.
The concept of ‘perpetuity’ comes to mind. Whatever happened, did it change your life from that point on? For me, one experience when I was around thirty, did it for me. Moments were experienced that were shockingly sublime. SHOCKINGLY sublime. From those few moments forward, I was hooked, and I still am. Arrival? For me, Yes!
Since my first reading of the Velveteen Rabbit, it has remained a favorite. A story about being ‘real’, discussed by toys. In it, Margery Bianco, the author, has the Skin Horse say, ‘Real isn’t how you are made, it’s a thing that happens to you’.
Those words still make me cry. ‘It’s a thing that happens TO you.’ Everything about this being real, is given. Not earned, not bought, and not found. It’s a gift. Like a Christmas in the middle of July. Unexpected. Undeserved. Unbelievable.
A profound sense of inner peace.
Following is just a selection from The Velveteen Rabbit. Reading it may be the best thing you have allowed yourself to do this year. The first paragraph is a masterpiece.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
The Infinite 