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25
September 2007 |
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Those
who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to
a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of
colors.
Horace
Mann
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Life
is certainly only worthwhile as it represents struggle for worthy
causes. There is no
struggle in perfect security.
I am quite certain that the human being could not continue
to exist if he or she had perfect security.
Dwight
D. Eisenhower
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No
one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing
to have it. Peace is
a margin of power around our daily need.
Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly
droughts to dry up. Peace
is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual
hospitality.
Harry
Emerson Fosdick
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Excerpt
from Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria
Rilke
Translated
by M.D. Herter Norton
If we think of
this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it
appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of
their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they
walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security.
And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which
drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of
their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable
terror of their abode.
We, however,
are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and
there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are
set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond,
and over and above this we have through thousands of years of
accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we
are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from
all that surrounds us.
We have no
reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has
it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses
belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.
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And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which
counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that
which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we
most trust and find most faithful.
How should we
be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of
all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn
into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are
princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and
brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being
something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must
not be frightened, Dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before
you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like
light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you
do. You must think that something is happening with you,
that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it
will not let you fall.
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Letters
to a Young Poet is a superb series of letters from Czech
poet Rainer Maria Rilke to Mr. Kappus, a young poet who
writes to Rilke for advice on his poetry and his life.
Rilke's responses are heartfelt, spiritual, and deeply
insightful, and they make for wonderful reading. |
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How
to Change the Life You're Giving Yourself
Guy Finley
We meet life, with all of its complex relationships,
through what we know. Each daily event, with its
dozens of unsuspected twists and turns, challenges
us to come up with our best answers. Once our most
suitable answer is at hand, we launch it and
ourselves into action and watch to see what happens.
With each situation this challenge and response
process is repeated over and over again, until the
condition resolves itself for us, either favorably
or not.
The point being made here is that at any given
moment we always do what we know. This may seem very
obvious, but with closer examination, especially in
light of the fact we wish to elevate ourselves and
what we are getting from this life, we will discover
something very astounding.
Read the next three sentences very carefully. I have
separated this trio of important ideas for ease of
reading, but they are very much connected to each
other. Each higher idea leads to the next one, and
when they are absorbed all together, they will tell
you a great secret.
Before you can get anything different from this
life, you must first do something different.
Before you can do anything different with your life,
you must first know something different.
Before you can know anything different, you must
first suspect and then confirm that it is your
present level of understanding that has brought you
what you now wish you could change.
Now let's reverse the order of these right ideas so
that we can see how they work from the other way
around.
Until you know something different you cannot do
anything different.
Until you do something different you will not get
anything different.
And until you really get something different from
your life you cannot know what you have missed and
how much more there is to understand.
Here's the point. Trying to change what you get from
life without first changing what you know about life
is like putting on dry clothes over wet ones and
then wondering why you keep shivering. You must stop
trying to change what you are getting for yourself
and go to work on changing what you are giving to
yourself.
It is vital for you to realize that life has not
held back its riches from you. The truth be known,
which it will be, you have been held back from real
life by a false nature which thinks life is meant to
be suffered through and that all there is to
insulate it from a harsh world is what it can win
and possess for itself.
While there is no denying our world is becoming more
and more cruel, there is also no denying that we are
the world. Neither our individual world nor the
global one can change until the connection between
what we experience and who we are is no longer
denied.
This is why we must have a new knowledge. Spiritual
knowledge isn't something mysterious or out of this
world. In fact, spiritual understanding is the most
important and practical knowledge a person can
possess. It is ultimately what we know about
ourselves, about who we really are, that determines
the quality of our life.
The truth is we cannot separate our answers from our
actions and our actions from their results. They may
appear to be individual in their operation because
they often occur at different times, but they are
really one thing. Intellectually we already know
this important concept, but its deep significance
hasn't yet become clear.
Let's look at the old adage, "As ye sow, so
shall ye reap." Here we can see a new
significance in this New Testament teaching. What
you sow is seed or, in this metaphor, your
knowledge. What you reap is the crop, or your
results. This spiritual knowledge shows us the great
importance of reconsidering what we think we know.
Life is trying to reach us and teach us, through our
experience of it, that we need new and true answers.
These higher answers serve as a special kind of
personal shelter that effortlessly keeps out what is
harmful and keeps in what is healthy and
life-giving. That is its nature.
Here are five examples of how these higher answers
can work for you. You'll see how each one also
suggests a new action and promises a new result.
Remember that each complete section, one through
five, represents a whole action. In reality, you
cannot separate your answers from your actions and
your actions from their results. Just as warmth must
follow sunlight, so must a higher, happier life
follow when inner-light is allowed to flourish.
1. Your New Answer: Real
strength is the refusal to act from weakness.
Your New Action: See where you have been calling
inner-weakness an inner strength; such as calling
anxiety concern, or anger righteousness. Dare to
live without these false strengths.
Your New Result: The end of your confusion and pain
over why your strength so often fails you. At the
same time you will realize the birth of a new and
true strength that never turns into its weak
opposite.
2. Your New Answer: Have the courage to proceed even
while knowing that you are afraid.
Your New Action: Dare to take one shaky step after
another.
Your New Result: Freedom from a life of fear because
fear cannot exist whenever insight is valued above
feeling frightened.
3. Your New Answer:
Forgiveness is the personal understanding that
except for circumstance there is no real difference
between you and your offender.
Your New Action: In spite of all the inner-screams
to the contrary, dare to treat your trespasser as
you would want to be treated.
Your New Result: When you stop punishing others for
their weakness, you will stop punishing yourself for
yours.
4. Your New Answer: Compassion is the conscious
refusal to add to another person's suffering, even
though it may seem to increase yours.
Your New Action: Dare to shoulder one hundred times
the mental and emotional weight you think you can
carry.
Your New Result: Contained right within the
suffering is the glimpse that there is no sufferer.
5. Your New Answer: Real hope
is the fact that there is always a Higher Solution.
Your New Action: See that any time you feel pained
or defeated, it is only because you insist on
clinging to what doesn't work. Dare to let go and
you won't lose a thing except for a punishing idea.
Your New Result: A new life that fears no inner or
outer challenge since defeat can only exist in the
absence of a willingness to learn.
Now that you have reviewed these five new and true
answers, you may wish to write down some of your
own. This is highly profitable for accelerating your
inner growth. Don't be discouraged if at first you
can't come up with any new ideas. There is great
gain in your efforts because even the smallest
attempt to find new answers is a new answer! The
more you work with truthful principles, the more
they will work for you.
Always remember when you work with powerful higher
ideas such as these that there are many temporarily
unknown parts of yourself that may try to mislead
you. They know that your growing true spiritual
insight will lead you away from their harmful
influence and deliver you to true safety. No matter
what the harmful voices within may say, whosoever
puts the Truth first will never lose anything except
for that which was never real in the first place.
Excerpted from "The Secret of Letting Go"
Rev. Edition, Llewellyn, © 2007 Life of
Learning. All Rights Reserved.
Permission granted to reprint with author credit
only.
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Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go
and starting over! For the daring person who wishes
to turn this possibility into reality, the keys to
less stress and brighter days are found in Guy
Finley's newly revised and expanded best-selling
book, "The Secret of Letting Go." Just as
gentle spring rains stir the seeds that become
beautiful wildflowers, so will the higher lessons in
this book help you let go and grow free. Revised
edition available October 1! Finley is
the acclaimed author of more than 35 books and audio
programs on the subject of self-realization, and is
the founder and director of Life of Learning
Foundation, a nonprofit center for self-study
located in Southern Oregon. Visit www.guyfinley.org/secret
for more info and to request your FREE Unstoppable
Starter Kit.
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Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week. |
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Eyes
Wide Open
tom walsh
New
Perspectives
A
couple of months ago, I was hired to do a job that
I'd never done before: teaching high
school. I was hired just a week before school
started, which meant that I had virtually no time to
prepare classes or do anything else before classes
began. And then one Monday I suddenly had 150
students in five classes, all expecting me to be
their teacher for the next year.
As
you can imagine, it's been a pretty stressful
time. One of the teacher's greatest tools is
class preparation so that we don't walk into a class
on any given day without an idea of what we're going
to do in that class on that day. Add to that
the fact that I was suddenly teaching a group of
people from an age group I'd never taught before,
and you have a pretty good idea of some of the
challenges I came to face. Fifteen years of
teaching college doesn't necessarily prepare a
person for teaching high school, where not every
student wants to be there, and many students don't
have any desire to do any work at all.
The
situation has challenged me to put into practice
many of the principles and ideas that I've been
studying as a part of developing this website over
the last eight years. I know that my reality
is something that I create myself, and that my
reactions to the students have more to do with how
that reality plays out than their actions
necessarily do. I know that every person
deserves to be respected and to be treated with
dignity, no matter their age or their behavior, but
I also know that disruptive behavior in a classroom
needs to be dealt with actively, and not simply
allowed to continue--after all, there are many other
students in the class who need to have a
disruption-free zone in which to study.
And
there have been many times when the stress has
threatened to overwhelm me, to make me change my
attitude and the way that I treat people. At
those times, there are several things that I remind
myself of in order to renew my perspective, in order
to be able to see things with new and clear eyes so
that I don't change my authentic behavior simply
because of stress.
First
of all, I remind myself that there is a Higher Power
in life, and that this power would not have put me
where I am without a reason. The job came out
of the blue, and it's a tremendous responsibility,
working with kids of high-school age, so I wouldn't
have been put there without reason, without being
the right person for this job. Also, the
Higher Power is there to hear my prayers when I need
to pray, so I'm not alone in doing this work with
the students.
Second
of all, I remind myself that I am human and that I
will make mistakes and sometimes be a little
under-prepared. I'm not going to beat myself
up over that fact--in fact, it's probably good for
the students to see from time to time that I am
human, just like them.
Third,
I remind myself that this is a tremendous
opportunity. As a teacher, I get the chance to
meet and know a large number of students on a very
personal level. These are really neat people
who could use someone in their lives who truly cares
about them and their progress. I can't think
of too many other opportunities in life to have such
a dramatic influence on the lives of people who need
positive influences.
Finally,
I remind myself that there are hundreds of thousands
of people all over the world doing the exact same
job that I'm doing, each with their own style and
levels of success. They get by. Most
love their jobs, no matter what obstacles they face,
no matter what difficulties come their way.
These people are my role models, and I appreciate
their presence.
So
when the stress starts to build, I remind myself of
these things. I pray. I focus on
creating a day that is calm and peaceful and loving
in my mind and in my heart, and I trust that the day
will be that way. I focus on the fact that the
kids in my classes are really cool kids, and if they
talk instead of listen sometimes, that's not a
personal affront--that's just kids doing what kids
will do.
The
bottom line is that I know that my greatest gift
lies in being in the classroom, and that I do a good
job there. I'm blessed to be able to use that
gift every day in classrooms filled with students
who are good people, young people, and caring and
compassionate people who just need a gentle push or
two in the right directions. How I treat them
and how I act towards them is up to me, and if I
want to treat them well--as they deserve to be
treated--then it's up to me to continually renew my
perspectives on life, on teaching, and on
them. Then they get more out of their
connection with me, and I certainly get more out of
my connection with them.
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Nature
is painting for us, day after day,
pictures of infinite beauty if
only
we have eyes to see them. . . .
John
Ruskin
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The
River of Feelings--an excerpt
Thich Nhat Hanh
Our
feelings play a very important part in directing all of our
thoughts and actions. In us, there is a river of
feelings, in which every drop of water is a different
feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its
existence. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of
the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows
by, and disappears.
There
are three sorts of feelings--pleasant, unpleasant, and
neutral. When we have an unpleasant feeling, we may
want to chase it away. But it is more effective to
return to our conscious breathing and just observe it,
identifying it silently to ourselves: "Breathing
in, I know there is an unpleasant feeling in me.
Breathing out, I know there is an unpleasant feeling in
me." Calling a feeling by its name, such as
"anger," "sorrow," "joy," or
"happiness," helps us identify it clearly and
recognize it more deeply.
We
can use our breathing to be in contact with out feelings and
accept them. If our breathing is light and calm--a
natural result of conscious breathing--our mind and body
will slowly become light, calm, and clear, and our feelings
also. Mindful observation is based on the principle of
"non-duality": our feeling is not separate
from us or caused merely by something outside us; our
feeling is us, and for the moment we are that
feeling. We are neither drowned in nor terrorized by
the feeling, nor do we reject it. Our attitude of not
clinging to or rejecting our feelings is the attitude of
letting go, an important part of meditation practice.
If
we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and
nonviolence, we can transform them into the kind of energy
that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us. By
the work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can
illuminate so much for us, offering us insight and
understanding into ourselves and society. |
| Lucidly
and beautifully written, Peace Is Every Step contains
commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from
Buddhist Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and
community leader. It begins where the reader already is (kitchen,
office, driving a car, walking in a park) and shows how deep
meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh shows how to be
aware of relationships with others and of the world around us, its
beauty and also its pollution and injustices. Through deceptively
simple practices, Peace Is Every Step encourages the reader
to work for peace in the world as he or she continues to work on
sustaining inner peace by turning the "mindless" into the
mindful. Peace Is Every Step is a useful, and necessary,
addition to any Buddhist studies or self-help reference shelf. |
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