Tag Archives: Faith

Happy New Day and other Words that Turn

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noisemakers

Happy New Year.

Well, maybe this year, we should work on something more realistic. How about, Happy New Day?

Not that I don’t expect you to have a great year. It’s just ‘Happy New Year’ is biting off a whole lot more than anyone can reasonably chew at one time. As Jonathan Larsen reminded us, there are 525,600 minutes in a year. There are going to be good minutes and bad minutes. Let’s face it. That’s life. If you get all Pollyanna and try to take on the whole year at once by pasting the word ‘happy’ on it, you are 1) being unrealistic, 2) will be disappointed, and 3) need to keep smoking that stuff for the next 364 straight days to actualize, and frankly I wouldn’t advise it.

Then there’s this problem that by saying, feeling, resolving, and determining Happy New Year on January 1 that you feel you must be happy for a whole year or that the year will naturally be filled with constant joy. And that resolve lasts until the first obstacle approaches which is usually 9am on Jan. 1, when you have to get out of bed because you promised your mother you’d walk the dog since she’s away and if he doesn’t get walked by 9 he has a habit of peeing on the clean laundry in the laundry basket.

Health clubs love January 1 and 2, and sometimes the Happy New Year effect lasts until January 3 or 4.  All these people come streaming in to join and pay the annual fee, and the clubs smile and welcome them, knowing that they won’t see 99 per cent of them again, until next January. Happy New Year.

Or you could have the opposite problem. I have a friend whose mother damns the past and by extension, the future. This morning she’ll write her new message to put on her refrigerator as a reminder, “2016, worst year ever” and take down the old one, “2015, worst year ever.”

Someone said to me last night, “I hope this new year is better,” as if a unit of time were responsible for him having a good or bad year. The only person, place or thing responsible for whether you have a good or bad year is you. If something you think is bad happens to you on the first day of 2017, and you turn around and blame the year (and then by extension somehow curse the other 364 days of your beautiful life that is trying to blossom every day), then you’ve just lost a year!

And when that bad thing happens, because let’s face it, things you deem as bad will happen, then the opportunity for challenge and redemption from that bad thing is also being tarnished. “Oh shit, it’s just a bad year all around,” you might say.

Words matter. So when you fling them around, thinking they’re not important, don’t act surprised when the chickens come home to roost.  Words are the reality you are committing to, whether you know they are lies at the time, or not. They change reality. Look at fake news.

So here’s another one: The Pursuit of Happiness

No wonder we’re so miserable! 241 years later Americans are running around like chickens with their heads cut off pursuing happiness. You can see it in the arrogant way we chase the dollar.

Thomas Jefferson was a smart guy. Why didn’t he use his own inner wisdom to make the Declaration of Independence read: “…life and the liberty to find the happiness within”? Then all this ridiculous, ambitious, American “pursuing” would be nullified and we would do what we must – look within for our answers; for that is the only place where our real happiness lies. Imagine a government that was actually created to protect the unalienable rights of helping human beings find the happiness within? Yikes! That would be a different animal from the one we have entirely.

And while we’re talking animals, let’s talk about this one from those early Bible superstars Adam and Eve: “…dominion over the animals.” Here’s another instance where one word in the wrong place has had disastrous effects.

Over? Really? What arrogance! No wonder the planet is in such a mess. This change in the bible story that occurred by those in charge of putting the Bible together in 200 AD was a kind of Dick Cheney sort of thing. (Remember the Clear Skies Act of 2003 which actually loosened controls for pollution?) It was there, it was easy. It was fun to play with words. Animals are stupid and had no vote. So why not make the story that God said we had “dominion over”, instead of the way it originally read “dominion with” the animals.

‘With’! Like share the planet with them for christ sake! Like it’s not all for you. What were you thinking? You have to share! There’s a Native American reservation in Montana where great money, effort and expense have been summoned to build bridges over the highways for heavily travelled animal trails. Like that!

Think about the words we live with. Think about the words we take for granted. Then don’t always take them for granted. 2017 just might be a good year to examine everything. And I mean everything!

Share. Think. Live tougher. Respect. Repeat.

Happy New Day!

 

Here you stand

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vitruvian-manHere you stand. In the middle of a working universe. You are a sentient, conscious, flag-waving human being and you have certain rights, tendencies and beliefs.

This universe is exclusively yours because you had the audacity to wake up in it. As much as you can experience is yours. Though other people’s universes can be similar to yours, enough so you can compare prices of wide screen TVs at a cocktail party, they are not yours.

No one can argue with your perception, your beliefs, your judgements or understandings; because they are yours and you are the one who woke up here.

Do you know what anyone else is really thinking or experiencing? No you do not. Not really. Do you think cheese makes a mouse happy? You will never know. You are not a mouse.

You could be a lone wolf type human, living in the wilderness, shunning all human contact, but since one of your human tendencies is to need the love and protection of other humans, no matter how far out you go, you will always desire, or expect, or go on Facebook to prove to other humans, that you and your universe exist and that this is your set of beliefs and guiding principals and these are what you stand for–John Doe, major human–attention must be paid.

Esho funi means the non-duality of life. There is no separation between life and it’s environment. You are the life in this equation. Your environment is everything else you think is outside you — family, animals, villages, houses, Cheezits. But the surprise is that there is no separation. Those things that you think are outside you and happening to you, are what you actually have pulled into your universe. That’s why cause and effect is so important to consider. Make good causes have good effects in your universe, bad causes, bad effects.

The question is, what do you need to wake up happy each day at the center of your universe?

Encouragement plays a part, but if you are always looking outside yourself for answers then any number of crazy humans can influence what you mistakenly think is your wisdom; but, as it turns out, it’s really CNN’s, your mother’s, Bill Maher’s, your girlfriend’s, President Trump’s or  something you saw on the internet. Time to tune out,  unplug, turn off.

Confidence plays a part. The confidence to take action, to keep going when things look dire, so that eventually you become “naturally confident.” The more you face your problems honestly, the stronger the connection, the more confident you become, the more you understand where your answers are, you just have to face yourself to get to them.

Challenge plays a part. The nature of human existence on this planet is challenge. So now you know why your boss is so tough or why your mother was addicted to pain killers. They have to be. They are the circles of your karmic universe that only you can struggle against and win. You are at the center of the universal super weave, and the actions you take to change things, good or bad, are the bricks and foundations of the houses you create. They can be mansions or crack houses.

But I believe that the most useful answer is Faith. Faith is good. In fact it turns out that faith is a human necessity. Your hope, spirit, belief allow your universe the engine of faith. If you don’t believe or half believe, just in Church on Sundays, or just on Tuesdays when the girl from Ipanema goes walking by; if your belief is shoddy; holy, as in there are plenty of holes in it; filled with sarcasm one day and doubt the next and then sure, why not, a little bit of hope on Thursdays, but then you turn around and blame God or your mother for what is wrong in your universe and  no one can change the karmic dynamic of the universe you have been born to, only you can do that; then it’s not much of an engine and you might want to increase your horsepower.

So next time you roll out your long list of things to blame for your life, burn it instead. Your life, your environment comes from you. Period.

That’s where you stand: in the middle of a working universe. It’s working because you work there. It is extraordinary because you are extraordinary. Awaken to you. Embrace you. Seek your answers in the U. of you. Build faith. Take action.

 

 

 

 

 

That’s why I like to sit facing the emotional mirror of myself and chant. Together we are part of the infinite–my mesh net universe that I am at the center of. The more I chant, the stronger the connection, the more confident I become, the more I understand that all my answers are in me. I just have to chant to get to them.

This is a good feeling. Plus the knowledge that though I have the answers, I can’t possibly execute them without the other beings in my universe. I need them as much as they need me.