Everyone wants to go home. It is not morbid to want death, only that death brings freedom. Freedom to be exactly who you are. There is no choice about when is the right time. Life sometimes feels like one is stuck. Fixated to one point in time. How can we find freedom when we are alive? Purpose. There must be purposeful living.
Purposeful living is our only hope to transcend life’s limitations. It is purpose that provides us with a look outside the box. Yet, purpose is sometimes hard to find, hold on to, and endure. Why is it difficult to hold purpose? Time is both an illusion and a reality. Time creates barriers to true purpose. We are lost in the illusion that time is permanent- the now feels overpowering. Release. Each hour or moment we spend focusing on the material world feels like an eternity. If we perceive time through our five senses, it creates anxiety, fear and dependence. If we shift our thoughts to the spirit, we can find relief. But it is difficult to train the mind to do these things. We are attracted to drugs and alcohol because these things speed up or slow down time and it is our perception of time that either inhibits or liberates us. Sometimes we are more secure in a sense of eternity while at other moments we are happy that an experience passes quickly. It is very curious how we experience time and the passing of it.
Sometimes we want another life but we cannot reach it. The other life that we aspire to have is always out of reach. We are stuck in the wanting and cannot see that we are often living exactly what we dream. But we do not stop to admire it, savor it and respect what we have achieved. We can choose to be anything. We can acquire any experience that we desire. Experiences are more valuable than material things. Often we confuse an item with what it offers us. A feeling or an experience embodied in it. For example, a phone is simply the experience of connecting with others. However, if we get caught up in the material, we do not connect and ultimately feel empty. Modern technology does this paradox to us. It creates false illusions of networking. It can both open and close down communication depending on how you use it. It is important to identify the purpose of all things. In its purpose, you can understand your own truth. There you can refocus your thoughts, your energy onto the meaning behind the things.
Sometimes we think our purpose is one thing and then realize it is another. Living in the present moment requires flexibility. Energies are always changing, moving us to different directions. It is better to be aware and open to changing currents than to be fixated on an idea. It can hurt to let go of our ideas because they feel like pieces of ourselves, our identity. Yet, only when we let them go, do we find that our self is not our idea but rather we are a conduit for ideas to travel from one self to another. Ideas need to be set free and yet our emotions tell us the opposite. Some people call this the struggle of the ego. I am not sure why we have to experience conflict over ideas. Perhaps it has to do with value. We believe that ideas, like our identity, can have a material value that we can benefit from. That is why it is dangerous to hold onto ideas or an identity because to establish value is the opposite of freedom. Freedom is the absence of value. It is to be free. Of course, the dilemma lies in the fear that if we do not give value to things and others continue to impose value on these things, then we will be left without. How can we feel free if everybody is not free? Freedom therefore requires that everybody participate in it. Freedom therefore is a state of mind and it is contingent on mass participation in it. How then can we practice freedom in a world where others continue to impose value on material things? How can we teach freedom and create safety in the practice? One of the primary learnings that we must acquire is the learning of abundance. If we allow abundance to exist in our lives, then we can practice freedom because accepting abundance negates the fear of lack.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
Real World Brief: On Seed News
We are the bringers of news to America. We are the voices of the people. We experience the toil of the earth, the woes of labor, the disenchantment of everyday things. Every movement, every calling, every revolution starts at our feet. Yet. And I say yet painfully. We are rarely the bearer of such things. We are just the beginning. Let me explain.
Behind every report, every Rhodes Scholar, every doctorate, every critic, every artist – is the real thing, the news, the experience, the life, the struggle, the experience. And yet, we are not the bearer of news. We are not the published few. We are not the reputable group called pundits, called artists, called journalists, called historians, called noteworthy few who make a living off the lives and backs of the rest of us. We are not the scholars who make a living dictating research at college off the backs of disenfranchised boys and girls who were paid candy canes and blow-pops to fill out yet another survey or take another test – all for the benefit of John Doe, Ph.D. who publishes another research report saying all in one “the achievement gap exists,” and “we continue to study outcomes.”
We are the ones who sweat and toil. We are the ones who deliver curriculums made each night by the bedside, after a long days work, because if we don’t nothing gets taught. We are the ones who dig in the soil and give over what we find for a small compromise, commitment or compensation – most likely enough to feed a month or two state of mind. We are the ones who sit and listen to the problems of mankind, only to share for a fare to get from here to tomorrow. When will the person who dreams, feels, works, toils, spoils, rots, cries, despairs, gives up and comes back, forgets about school be the one to share their story for me and for you? Why do we always read about our lives through the pen of others? Why must we find an intermediary? Why are we always looking for someone to tell us our story? Going back to school, sending out a paper, looking for a publisher, getting a job are all such difficult tasks for the working class while for some, it is as simple as that. And the best reads are the ones of the elite who go slipping and sliding into the ordinary world only to go back and tell the details of this and that for the purpose of tolerance, understanding and diplomacy. When won’t we need you to give me charity? When will I get to speak in my own language? When will we get paid for our experience instead of selling it to you (and often without knowing) for free, or for beans? Gringo news. I don’t prefer to hear about things from you. I prefer to hear it from the source. What? They don’t know how to write as eloquently as you? Not true. The only thing is this man who works in the mines doesn’t know the editor of the Nation or the Boston Globe. Isn’t that just it? Coming of Age in Latin America.
We must make a public and valued space for the ordinary. It is not because the ordinary is anything more than what currently exists, but rather because it is not anything less. We must make space for the ordinary. The ordinary builds peace and acceptance for every day life and existence. We must practice the art of honoring the every day voices of the street. That does not mean the “street” as in ghetto. It means the all in between. The world that we know it, not the kings and the queens or the stars and their bars. Simply you and me and mom and pop and his neighbor and down the street. We are the people and we need to fight for a place to be heard. Not because we have studied, or deserve it or have merited it or because we have worked for it or because we are exceptionally gifted and talented or because we are aspiring to be somebody. Simply because we are the ones who sweat the toil of the earth and without us, with out us, there would be no green.
Behind every report, every Rhodes Scholar, every doctorate, every critic, every artist – is the real thing, the news, the experience, the life, the struggle, the experience. And yet, we are not the bearer of news. We are not the published few. We are not the reputable group called pundits, called artists, called journalists, called historians, called noteworthy few who make a living off the lives and backs of the rest of us. We are not the scholars who make a living dictating research at college off the backs of disenfranchised boys and girls who were paid candy canes and blow-pops to fill out yet another survey or take another test – all for the benefit of John Doe, Ph.D. who publishes another research report saying all in one “the achievement gap exists,” and “we continue to study outcomes.”
We are the ones who sweat and toil. We are the ones who deliver curriculums made each night by the bedside, after a long days work, because if we don’t nothing gets taught. We are the ones who dig in the soil and give over what we find for a small compromise, commitment or compensation – most likely enough to feed a month or two state of mind. We are the ones who sit and listen to the problems of mankind, only to share for a fare to get from here to tomorrow. When will the person who dreams, feels, works, toils, spoils, rots, cries, despairs, gives up and comes back, forgets about school be the one to share their story for me and for you? Why do we always read about our lives through the pen of others? Why must we find an intermediary? Why are we always looking for someone to tell us our story? Going back to school, sending out a paper, looking for a publisher, getting a job are all such difficult tasks for the working class while for some, it is as simple as that. And the best reads are the ones of the elite who go slipping and sliding into the ordinary world only to go back and tell the details of this and that for the purpose of tolerance, understanding and diplomacy. When won’t we need you to give me charity? When will I get to speak in my own language? When will we get paid for our experience instead of selling it to you (and often without knowing) for free, or for beans? Gringo news. I don’t prefer to hear about things from you. I prefer to hear it from the source. What? They don’t know how to write as eloquently as you? Not true. The only thing is this man who works in the mines doesn’t know the editor of the Nation or the Boston Globe. Isn’t that just it? Coming of Age in Latin America.
We must make a public and valued space for the ordinary. It is not because the ordinary is anything more than what currently exists, but rather because it is not anything less. We must make space for the ordinary. The ordinary builds peace and acceptance for every day life and existence. We must practice the art of honoring the every day voices of the street. That does not mean the “street” as in ghetto. It means the all in between. The world that we know it, not the kings and the queens or the stars and their bars. Simply you and me and mom and pop and his neighbor and down the street. We are the people and we need to fight for a place to be heard. Not because we have studied, or deserve it or have merited it or because we have worked for it or because we are exceptionally gifted and talented or because we are aspiring to be somebody. Simply because we are the ones who sweat the toil of the earth and without us, with out us, there would be no green.
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