Daily Living
These compositions cover topics related to things we can do everyday to help us in our lives and with our growth and development.
The Folly of Familiarity
Life presents us with uncountable possibilities, even in the simplest of tasks or actions can be approached or done any number of ways. For any of the acts we do there are no prescribed or predefined ways of going about them. We are all unique and so each of us can and will do the same thing differently than others. We put what is referred to as our own stamp on things. And while we do not do things exactly the same way as anyone else would do it we are also capable of doing the same thing a number of different ways.
This diversity of expression, like the diversity of form we see throughout the Cosmos is one of the wonderful and indeed wondrous things about life. Yet as wonderful as it is, therein lies a trap for the unmindful. The trap that awaits us is that the more we do something, and like the outcome we believe our choice manifested the more likely we are to end up doing it the same way each time. That is to say we reduce all the wonderful options we have down to a few, then a couple and then one. This is a process that creates routines and we end up in various forms of ruts. Even when we don't set about to do this deliberately, it almost invariably happens.
The Future We Create
Peace on earth is and has always been an elusive goal, one lost in the endless shuffle of billions of feet striving to find some balance within their own domain. The world remains beset by our own demons which century after century of living have reinforced rather than silenced. There have been epic struggles between nations, cultures, races and religions, between the rich and the poor and those who see believe they have a right to rule and those who would be led justly and so on. There is little anyone can do to change this directly for there are only two things we can do: we can change ourselves and we can inspire others to change.
We all would like to have a world that is free or at least freer of the types of conflicts that have plagued us. However, most mistake the source of them in that they see others as doing this to the world. This is not accurate for the source of these conflicts lies within each of us. You cannot have a Hitler without people willing and able to go along. We have seen this in action lately in the Middle East where the “Arab Spring” has become a phenomenon. A large number of people there are showing they are no longer content to live without freedom from being dictated to. It is not something that has happened in the west much though mostly because we have become accustomed to our “creature comforts” and will not forsake them easily.
Everyone Matters
At the core level, I believe we all want to be happy or at peace or to feel good about ourselves in one form or another. What this is will certainly vary from person to person. Being in this state does not to imply that we never have issues to deal with, just that they do not overwhelm us, and put us off our stride. However, we know that this is not the case for the majority for if it were, the world would not be in the shape it is in. We know this to be true because we can choose to react positively, rather than negatively, to even the ‘bad’ things that may occur in our lives. This happens more frequently to those who have developed themselves to a higher level or who came into this life with a higher level of awareness than to the majority of people. As a corollary, if more people were capable of doing this, it would be reflected in the world around us. A casual glance at the news shows that this is not the case.
I do not say this to lay blame. We are all at the level of awareness we are for a reason, it is not an accident. Further, we react as we have learned to react, and will continue to do so unless we make a conscious choice to change that. When we choose to make ‘better’ conscious choices it shows in how we react to our experiences. That is to say, our relationship with the world is defined not by the world around us; it is defined or established by each of us for ourselves. Any discord in our lives is not the fault of others; it is a direct result of the discord within each of us.
Three Words
The young boy watched his father replace the clips that hold the large cupboard doors below the sink in the kitchen. He peeked when he could to watch what he was doing while being careful to stay back a bit so as to be out of his way. It did not take long before he was done and left after patting him on the head.
Left alone the boy looked at the closed cupboard for a short time before wandering over to them. He reached his hand careful as if uncertain, took a peak around and then pulled on the handle of the one on the right. He opening it to look at what his dad had done. When he did so he immediately noticed something was different about the way the cupboards opened. The new ones were silent, the distinctive click he had heard when pulling it open before was gone. He also noticed he didn’t feel the same vibrations he had when he pulled the door open before. The old clips had been tight so a good pull was required to open it. It still took a pull, but not nearly as hard. That alone warranted closer examination and found the difference between the old and new was both obvious and astonishing.
Under The Covers
In preparation for this composition, I considered a number of topics. What I found was that in many cases I had already explored them sufficiently, in whole or in parts of other essays, so that I have covered the ideas I thought to convey. While I continued to contemplate this week’s piece, several groups of thoughts collided together.
One of them came out of a conversation I had last week with a good friend, where I had suggested that maybe I should explore the way we perceive the world around us and how our perception triggers various thoughts, many judgmental or at least not clear and unconditionally loving. In addition, we chatted about how our mental blocks and filters are engaged in the observation and perception process. In turn this process can modify what we perceive and are aware of consciously. Hence, we can learn a great deal about ourselves by noticing what we think about as we observe. The thought I had at the time was to explore the idea that by noticing what we notice we actually start to change what we do notice. By doing this we will elevate our thoughts to a higher level.