551.

Principles

Systems and understanding

Your depth and breath

So you think you have the whole truth in a nutshell and your steel mind has wrapped around it.  Not so, not so.  You are traveling too fast to see anything that clearly.  Maybe your life is going from 'L' to 'P.' You might know there is a 'Q' or an 'S' but you have not seen them directly.  Your experience is from 'L' to 'P.'  Even then you are not static or stationary enough to solidify what you see.  You can report and get an idea or even make a sketch and maybe develop that, but a totally lock tight system is not for you to have.  You are a traveler in a shifting landscape observing only what your eye can see.  You know there is an entire alphabet somewhere, and you know something designed it, but between that and what you can observe and experience will always put a ceiling on the breathe and depth of your comprehension.

550.

My family

Holiday partying  

I've always resented
my mom's, my sister's, my niece's
'tradition' of holiday partying.

To celebrate while I am gone
seems so wrong.

How could my soul be happy?

549.  Past

Personal

A little dance done in private

548.  Past

Principles

Family

A tool

If you are not given a good sense of survival as a child, you will be prone to seek out principles and ideas as compensation.  The intended purpose of “principles and ideas” is to redirect you back to a balance and a workable harmony with reality as it is.  They are not the solution, but merely point you back to this reality.  Principles and ideas are not the end but a tool.

547.  Past

Principles

Family

Motivation

When you are young, pleasing your parents can provide plenty of motivation to work hard and do well.  Later, this is not enough.  You want to find out what makes “you tick,” what’s inside you, what you really want to do.  Still later, what you want to do “for you yourself” is not even enough. Sometimes it betrays itself.  So to keep active, or to get started, if your parents are still around, or at least around in spirit, you again return to your youth and you do it for them.  Finally, even this falls short and you are forced to find the impetus that goes beyond your parents and beyond yourself.  Both served as crutches to keep you going, but the deeper reasons have to come from deeper sources.

545.  Past

Principles

Death and Dying


The desire to leave

One doesn’t always need a tragedy, crisis, or horrible life experience to want to leave this world.  Sometimes enough small things can add up.  Experiences that are degrading, demeaning, or non-supportive can lead to a horrible existence.  The need for relief can come in many forms, but so can the desire to leave this life.   I’m not saying this should be followed, but it is part of the whole picture and should be given some space and respected. 

544.

Principles

Living and life

Lisa hit it  

Ah, I let too much time go by and the exchange is not fresh in my mind.  But I want to honor that moment as I said I would. Lisa Edelman from the UK, a Facebook friend, often will report on important doings, such as a spider being caught in her hair. When others posted pictures of various spiders, I said we could start a model agency and Lisa was all 'go' on that. 

Other times we might message one another and venture into more personal turf.  This one time Lisa asked me how I was and I alluded to some frustrations I had.  My dad's blood pressure was 184 and the implications worried me.  I was not ready to lose him.  I also felt the weight of living alone and having to always watch my back.  The tribe was long gone.  The bravura of going it alone was isolating. Joining any group just to be around others was so compromising.  And everything was money and in your face about it.  How to live was always a question.  I could not sacrifice a bull as in the Torah.  Well, maybe symbolically. 

I had gone to a doctor to have my blood test interpreted and my numbers were great, as good as can get.  That was good news, and the doctor and his nurse and I gloated a bit. I didn't allude to the sinus head pressure I often felt as I did then, as it would be a buzz killer.  Why should I ruin the mood? 

Of course I'm being a little glib here.  The issues and resentments run deeper. I did not have the strength  to search for a spiritual answer.  If the above wanted to reach me I was here but in no mood for any illusions.

So,, without going into detail, in a few lines  I hinted at all this when asked by Lisa Edelman how I was.  She replied, "Yes, I know what it's like when faced with our limitations and horror." Lisa called it and didn't shy away from doing so.  Let's take a moment to honor that or just a deep breath.  

I just sat and let her words seep in.  I didn't force a solution. Sometimes that's all you should do.  At the very least it was nice to know I was not alone.  Sometimes a piercing observation is all we get.

543.

Principles

Living

Where you are at

I think to some extent you have to be a life and add things to it.  You can't give to any outside discipline or study endlessly.  Today your life comes first and then what's added has to fit into your equilibrium and balance.  If you blindly serve something outside of your life it can suck you dry. You can investigate and research a certain avenue or concept and see where it leads to but you can't lose yourself. "You are where you are at" and even a great idea has to integrate itself slowly into your system.

542.  Past

Vignette

Cynthia worked at her son in law's clothing store selling Paris fashions and that night we talked. I forgot what led up to it but I said you need good memories, they're important.  She added "especially if you don't have enough money as you get older and have to work.  They might be all you have."

541.  Past

Principles

Living


Help

True help is not about advice, counseling, friendship or guidance.  It is help, getting in there, being involved. Once, when I was buying a used car, I had many other expenses, my friend Ruth gave me $200 for an $800 car purchase.  This wasn’t talk.  This was help.

In this world it is true that there is a “price for everything.”  It is also true “nothing is for nothing.”  Given this, real help is when someone gives and asks nothing in return, or at least asks for less in return.  The concept of “a price on everything” is broken because the giving was for free or for a price that was less than what was given.

The only other place on this earth where we can receive without paying is from parents.  They are capable of giving without asking for a return.  What you receive is for free.  If you don’t have parents that gave freely you have been set-up for a lifelong deficit.  In a sense, you haven’t been filled with the fuel for life.  Later, the world demands payment from you for what you need to live and since you haven’t received, you have nothing with which to pay.  You are forced to cut corners, be dishonest or to compensate.  This is the plight of one who was never nourished.  If you have parents that give freely, it is a gift.  It is power, it is life itself.