"The Old Irish Healer to the Soul"

It's not your back that hurts, but the burden.

It's not your eyes that hurt, but injustice.

It's not your head that hurts, it's your thoughts.

It's not the throat, but what you don't express or say with anger.

It's not the stomach hurts, but what the soul does not digest.

It's not the liver that hurts, it's the anger.

It's not your heart that hurts, but love.

And it is love itself that contains the most powerful medicine.

(Unknown Author)

Watts Up

 

The secret is that “other” eventually turns out to be you. 

I mean, that’s the element of surprise in life: when suddenly you find the thing most alien. We say now: what is most alien to us? Go out at night and look at the stars, and realize that they are millions and millions and billions of miles away. Vast conflagrations out in space. And you can lie back and look at that. Whew! Say, “Well! Surely I hardly matter. I’m just a tiny, tiny little peekaboo on this weird spot of dust called Earth. And all that going on out there. Billions of years before I was born. Billions of years after I will die.” And nothing seems stranger to you than that, more different from you. 

[BUT ...]

But there comes a point (if you watch long enough) when you’ll say, “Why, that’s me!” It’s the “other” that is the condition of your being yourself, as the back is the condition of being the front. And when you know that, you know you never die.

Alan Watts 

Art of Peace

The Wisdom of Morihei Ueshiba

Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love.
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment.

Loyalty and devotion lead to bravery. Bravery leads to the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love.

Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.

The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.

Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer.

All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together.
Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.
As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you.

Each and every master, regardless of the era or the place, heard the call and attained harmony with heaven and earth. There are many paths leading to the top of Mount Fuji, but there is only one summit - love.

Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher.

There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within.

The art of Peace I practice has room for each of the world's eight million gods, and I cooperate with them all. The God of Peace is very great and enjoins all that is divine and enlightened in every land.

Big Brother and the Emoji

  Big Brother and the Emoji

I got two [2] gripes. Two [2].

First [1], how social media is gradually corraling us hoi polloi into a vacuous language of emojis. As if we don't already communicate in jargon with conventional words.

A social media friend is in the habit of tacking an emoji to my comments. Heck, my own kids, when it even suits them to, give me a thumbs-up; or, if feeling generous, a heart. Pressed on how that says absolutely nothing ... huffs and puffs. Oh, Dad! Not much room for good old fatherly criticism, hey?

I get it with the "Like" thumb; thank you Mark Z. You like it. We Like it. I Like it. Just what you like, and what you think you are liking ... who knows. That heart. Nice. But, is the Heart emoticon gonna be a substitute for the real thing? It seems to be taking the love out of love. Just a toss-away item. Attenuated jargon. 

My issue is that we may be headed for a world of social interaction where we not only have moved away from empty lip-service words, but are at the dawn of a Brave New World where what passes for relationship and exchange is just a set of emoticons. Empty of any real sharing, and very much left to the personal interpretation of the receiver.

Does an angry face emoticon mean that you are not liking something? Or, is it just that you happen to be angry. A tear, that something saddens you, or you're just sad. How should anyone know from the basic image? Even, the juxtaposition. Not a lot to go on.

That's not all. That Thumb thingy. I'm wondering if some smart alec algorithmer is not as we speak right now burning the midnight oil to harvest all our "likes" and developing an image of each and every one of us. Then, grouping us into types. Like, I like photography, pretty girls, cooking, cars, political dust-ups, jokes. Like that. Could be one day we'll all be gathered together like birds of a feather. For, not just like it is now, advertising purposes, but for political machinations. As in how pols are becoming more and more adept at framing reality with words that ring our chimes. I think it's called confirmation bias. If you don't think you're susceptible to that, then you can almost certainly and for sure be assured that you are.

There's more. Suppose we come to a day when the Thumbs Up symbol is so thoroughly inculcated into our imagination that the mere appearance of it automatically gets us into agreement and acceptance? Imagine watching something or other — advertisement, or politician — and whilst viewing a Thumbs Up flashes for an unperceivable split second across the screen. In our Brave New World Big Brother can really pull the strings. We go along like sheep. Contented with exchanges of vacuous emoticons. Unaware of the meta-information we are providing for our meta-conditioning.

The second [2] ... is how iTech owns everything that can be said about you and me. I think the term is "Data Mining".

Not just our personal information. You might say, hey, there's nothing personally there I need be concerned with. It relates to the first point. Based on our individual histories of purchases, websites visited, Likes tacked on, where we shop ... on and on, we describe ourselves. Again, may be fine for marketers to tailor messages to select audiences. That's already annoying enough. But, all that information can be aggregated, and we get lumped into groups, by type. Like a vast, but more reliable focus group for anyone who wants to control things to have as a reliable resource at their disposal. 

Let's hope Big Brother is benevolent. I don't think the folks trying to pull the strings set out to do that. But, power corrupts. First, it's an app to get people together. Then, it's an app to put us together ... into categories. Which categories then can be manipulated according to their relative fears and desires. 

Now, the question then is this ... who is it that's calling the tune? And, even more to the point ... who is calling their tune. In the Absolute sense, we know the answer to that. But, in the relative world, it's a thing. So, I guess the question is whether even having a concern about all of this is maybe just perpetuating the problem? 

Let's keep one eye on the Lord. [l]  

Allowing Makes Space for Change

 

The Secret of the "Felt Sense".

"What's cut off, undecided, remains the same.
When it's felt, it changes. 

Most people don't know about this. 

They think if they don't allow themselves to feel the negative part of themselves, they will remain good people. The opposite happens, negative aspects last for years. A few moments devoted to feeling them in your body, make them change. If there's something wrong or sick about you, let it be inside, and breathe. It's the only way it can develop into the form it needs."

Eugene Gendlin