All sane now.
Having not made any progress in the organization of my oasis/disaster, I thought I would return to the scene of last night's crime.
When my best self is operating this meat suit, I do write in my journal (no "journal" is not a verb no matter what Ronald Reagan says) and take notes from books and magazines. And as the years go by and I stumble across these gems, I am always glad I did. Maribeth Fischer's book, The Language of Goodbye has been marked with book darts for several years, waiting for me to transcribe those passages.
"It's almost frightening ... But you see what you want to. Isn't that always the case? Isn't that what allowed people to have affairs and fight wars and get married to begin with? You close your eyes to the stuff you can't handle and you keep going and you keep believing that somehow it will all work out. You pray or you take alternative vitamins or you collect lucky coins or make wishes on birthday candles and falling stars."
"Within" will? (I still haven't figured out "without" will.) On a side note, in French "within" is dans, without is sans as in going without, which is not what I mean really, but interesting nonetheless. I suppose dehors would be closer. Those of you who are fluent, please illuminate me.
All of that little paragraph seems to describe "within/dans" will, but without much consciousness or determination (which is another way of saying "will", no?) ... That sounds like walking the path with closed eyes, which is only recommended (by me at least) when you ARE frightened and that is the only way you can make yourself move forward. You know, like Don Juan telling us to just jump. Or Nike telling us to just do it.
At the Ojai Retreat (see, I am still tying this together), Eric Schiffman said:
"The only force that can overcome fear is wonder."
And Schiffman, and Ravindra, and Hirschfield have all advised me/us about paying attention to things, which is not generally easily accomplished either with closed eyes or with fearfulness.
Now, where is the path? Where is the yoga? (I have the writing going on!)
Miep looks as if she is paying attention.
There is this funny little book that came out in the early 80s called LOVE IS LETTING GO OF FEAR -- of course, that is easier said than done. But the premise of that book is that all we are trying to do is to find love and everything we do -- is to get to that love. I found that confusing until I began watching DEXTER from that perspective! What is a twisted sense of love, but wanting self-acceptance? We do all these crazy things to gain that elusive thing outside of us, when it is in us all the time. Love is not outside of us, it is what we feel within ourselves, for ourselves. We are our greatest tool to work with and toy to play with -- it starts right there.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully said, my dear Dreamfarming Gal!
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