Life 04 (Aug 09 - Sep 09)

[winston]

Infinite Life Choices

When faced with life choices, why do we often feel as though there are only a few good options for us, if that?

Most of us live from the standpoint that we have only a handful of viable mediocre to good choices, each with benefits and drawbacks that we carefully weigh and compare against one another.

But imagine if you had a myriad of excellent choices, in your profession, your relationships, your health, your home, etc. Imagine if you could choose between one fantastic career and another or one amazing home and another. Imagine if you had numerous options to choose from, each of them stirring your soul, exciting you when you think about them and your only problem was that you couldn't choose because you wanted them all.

Many of us take what we can get, settling on a mediocre opportunity, not because it makes our heart sing, but because we think that's the best that will come along.

When something good comes along, we jump on it, feeling that we better take it now before it's gone. After all, we think, good opportunities such as this don't happen very often.

But they only don't because we think they don't. Expand your scope of choices by expanding your beliefs to embrace the possibility of infinite choices. And not just mediocre or good choices, but GREAT choices! Ones that cause your spirit to dance, ones that ignite the passion inside you and flow life force through you, ones that make you jump out of bed every morning in anticipation of experiencing them.

Life offers an infinite array of powerful, positive, life giving choices. At any given moment, there are hundreds of them just waiting to be noticed and plucked... by YOU! Lift your vision to the infinite choices awaiting you.

Source: www.FollowYourSoul.com.

[winston]

The Highest of Arts by Alexander Green

Many would describe my friend John as the picture of success.

He enjoys good health, a loving family, a high-paying job, and many of the fruits of affluence.

Yet his mood last week was black as a moonless night.

"Every day," he said, "I rise at the same time, have the same cup of coffee, take the same route to the office, see the same business associates, and do pretty much the same thing I always do. My life may as well be on autopilot. Each month - each year - blends into the next. I feel like I'm marking time."

Some would argue that John should thank his lucky stars for all the problems he doesn't have. After all, there's nothing terribly wrong with his life. Except that he feels like he isn't really living it.

No doubt countless others feel the same way. Caught up in boredom, tedium, or existential angst, they lack a feeling of transcendence.

For that reason, they might benefit from listening to the Transcendentalists, a group of reformists, writers and intellectuals active in New England in the 1830's.

Leading the movement was the renegade minister, essayist, and poet-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Another dominant figure was Henry David Thoreau, an avid naturalist, essayist, reform advocate and civil disobedient.

Both men wrote eloquently about society, culture and the human condition. (I'll touch on a few of Thoreau's ideas today and discuss Emerson next week.)

Thoreau believed that as we get older we fall into a routine, gradually and mindlessly beating a track for ourselves. Bogged down with daily trifles, we lose our gusto for living.

The great mass of men, he wrote, live lives of quiet desperation.

More than 150 years ago, Thoreau blamed this on the rat race and materialism:

* Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

* Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasure which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

Thoreau wanted to avoid this trap. So he escaped to Walden Pond for two years "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately," he writes, "to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived."

Of course, vanishing into the woods isn't a realistic option for most of us. Some might even say it smacks of running from your problems rather than confronting them.

But Thoreau believed that personal peace and serenity are only found in communion with nature. It is where the great truths and existential secrets are discovered.

For Transcendentalists, nature is the key to spiritual attainment. It offers the solitude to think about how we spend our time. It provides the silence where Thoreau's "different drummer" can be heard.

Do not live foolishly like other men, he warned, but according to universal laws. That meant studying the ancients, revering wisdom, and living according to its dictates.

A successful life, Thoreau argues, is built on simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and meaningful work.

Reading him today awakens something inside us that modern society suppresses. Thoreau asks us to make a new estimate of ourselves, to think bravely about our lives, and boldly ask, "How shall I live?"

My friend John - and others suffering from the same ennui - might benefit from answering his call for personal renewal.

Thoreau reminds us that human life is a great privilege. We have the whole world to devour and explore, if we will only awaken to it.

Some may call the Transcendentalists dreamers. And there is certainly an element of idealism here.

But they were also chroniclers of the human spirit. And their advice to scorn appearances, conduct your life with wisdom and integrity, and transcend the often-deadening effects of modern culture is timeless.

We're only here once, they remind us. Life should be an ecstasy.

Or as Thoreau famously said, "To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

[winston]

The inward conflict

Then there is the inward conflict, which is much more complex. Why is there conflict in us? We are examining; we are not saying that we should or should not be without conflict. We are examining it; and to examine we must be very clear in our thinking, very acute in our observation; we must be intensely aware in observing the whole nature and the significance of conflict. Why is there conflict?

What do we mean by that word “struggle”? We are examining the meaning of the word, not what brings about conflict. When are we at all conscious of this word, of the fact? Only when there is pain; only when there is a contradiction; only when there is the pursuit of pleasure and it is denied.

I am aware of conflict when my form of pleasure in fulfilment, in ambition, in various forms is thwarted. When pleasure of ambition is frustrated, then I am conscious of conflict, but as long as the pleasure of ambition continues without any blockage, I have no sense of conflict at all.

There is pleasure in conformity. I want to conform to society because it pays me; it gives me profit. For security, for a means of livelihood, to become famous, to be recognized, to be somebody in society, I must conform to the norm, to the pattern set by society.

As long as I am conforming to it completely, which is a great pleasure, there is no conflict; but there is conflict the moment there is a distraction from that conformity.

The Collected Works vol XVI, pp 81-82

Source： jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

What is the process of refinement that transforms a human ?

A potter collects clay from the river bank, mixes water in it, puts it on a wheel and makes pots. The pot cannot hold water unless it undergoes refinement through fire.

Just as a pot becomes strong when it is processed in fire, man becomes the Divine when he undergoes refinement in the fire of wisdom. Clay gains value when it is refined and made into a pot. The metal gold gains added value and strength when it is made into a beautiful ornament. Likewise, refinement manifests the latent power in man and increases his value.

- Divine Discourse, Oct 12, 2002

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

You intended to come forth into the physical realm of contrast to define what is wanted, to connect with the Energy that creates worlds, and to flow it toward your objects of attention, not because the objects of attention are important -- but because the act of flowing is essential to life.

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Lincroft, NJ on Tuesday, October 15th, 1996 #195

Ｓｏｕｒｃｅ：　　ａｂｒａｈａｍ－ｈｉｃｋｓ．ｃｏｍ

[winston]

Why is our approach and attitude to others important?

If you enquire deeply, you can visualize the Divine in every human being and in every material.

Any matter should not be looked upon as mere matter but considered as an essence of Divinity. However, there is a gulf of difference between matter and an essence. Since matter is viewed as mere matter and not Divine, its value is demeaned.

You should consider everything as Divine. Every drop of blood in your body is suffused with Divinity. This Divine Energy has to be properly utilized by entertaining Divine thoughts.

- Divine Discourse, Oct 13, 2002

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

If I don’t compare, I am what I am

I know dullness only through comparison. I see you, very bright, very clever, intelligent—and I say, compared to her how dull I am. But if I don’t compare, I am what I am. Right?

I can then begin from there; but if I am comparing myself all the time with you, who are bright, intelligent, nice looking, capable, and all the rest of it, I am in perpetual conflict with you. But if I accept what I am—I am this—from there I can begin.

So conflict exists only when we deny the actual fact of “what is”. I am this, but if I am trying all the time to become that, I am in conflict. You are like that because you all engage in psychological becoming.

You all want to become businessmen, holy, or meditate properly, don’t you? So there is conflict. Instead of realizing the fact that I am violent and not moving away from that fact, I pretend not to be violent; and when I pretend not to be violent, conflict begins. So will you stop pretending and say, I am violent, let’s deal with violence?

On Conflict, p 130

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

What is the importance and value of refinement?

One cannot partake of paddy in its raw form. It has to be dehusked and refined into rice and cooked well; only then will it be fit for consumption. When paddy undergoes refinement and becomes rice, its value is enhanced several fold. The process of refinement involves grinding, separating the husk, removing the dust and polishing.

In the same way, one cannot get happiness for the mere asking. One has to work for it. The more one engages in good work, the greater will be the reward. The process of refinement lies in accepting all that is good and rejecting all that is bad. You should be prepared to work hard and get refined.

-Divine Discourse, Oct 13, 2002

Source： radiosai.org

[winston]

The “what is”

Living is a process of conflict in which there is violence; that is “what is”, the fact. The opposite is “non-violence”, a state in which there is no conflict, no violence.

The man who is violent is trying to become non-violent. It may take him ten years, or it may take him all the rest of his life to become non-violent, but in the meantime he is sowing the seeds of violence. So there is the fact of violence and the non-fact, which is non-violence, which is the opposite. In this contradiction there is conflict: the man trying to become something.

When you banish the opposite, not try to become non-violent, then you can actually face violence. Then you have energy which is not dissipated through conflict with the opposite. Then you the energy, the passion, to find out “what is”.

You are the World, p 78

Source: jkrishnamurthi.com

[winston]

Every cell in your body has a direct relationship with Creative Life Force, and each cell is independently responding. When you feel joy, all the circuits are open and the Life Force or God Force can be fully received.

When you feel guilt or blame or fear or anger, the circuits are hindered and the Life Force cannot flow as effectively.

Physical experience is about monitoring those circuits and keeping them as open as possible. The cells know what to do. They are summoning the Energy.

--- Abraham

Excerpted from the workshop in Chicago, IL on Sunday, November 2nd, 1997

Source: abraham-hicks.com