“In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth, right up until they realize that the Truth will rob them of their deepest held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. The freedom of enlightenment means much more than the experience of love and peace. It means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of self and life upside-down. For one who is truly ready, this will be unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any way, this will be extremely challenging indeed. How does one know if they are ready? One is ready when they are willing to be absolutely consumed, when they are willing to be fuel for a fire without end.”
— Adyashanti
Once again I offer you my authentic confusion. I’ve been somewhat obsessively watching the news from the U.S. and I feel dismay, anger and frustration. I am not surprised that Donald Trump revealed himself to be a bigot who would take the United States down a draconian path but that so many people would read and hear his ideas about immigration and not only find them reasonable but agree with them? Wow! A victory has been won for fear, uncertainty and doubt.
For those of us that fear the other, the internet must come as an cultural shock. Constantly we are bombarded with people who follow different religious beliefs and or lifestyles. If I lived happily in a rural area and never wished to travel and interact with different demographics I would find it difficult to be online at all. If I believed that my way of life was the only ‘correct’ one I would find myself beaten down by the realization that so many others had ‘gotten it wrong’.
Instead I have always had this intense need to understand others and try to see life from their point of view. I don’t believe that there is a wrong way except perhaps to limit myself to one viewpoint at a time.
Yet I don’t have answers and I keep discovering more questions and paradoxes as I go. I might find it comforting to stick to one point of view and eschew all others and the people who hold them. Yet that would not be being my authentic self.
Blessings, G
“If you think that people should be nice to one another, then by all means be nice. But when you project that belief onto the people and the world around you as if it were an objective reality, or worse still, as if it were their job to be nice to you, you put yourself at odds with what is, and suffering will surely follow.”
— Adyashanti
So much of my frustration in life comes from expectations. I expect people to act a certain way and when they don’t I feel cheated. Sometimes it is an anticipation towards what I believe is going to happen. As much as I may want it to, life does not always answer the call. Usually that turns out to be a good thing. Life and other people have the endless capacity to surprise in pleasant way. It also has an equal capacity to disappoint. The more I can face both with equanimity the more I find myself at peace.
Blessings, G
“You are not any of the stories you believed about yourself. What you are is actually the absence of story. That’s why the Buddha said, “There is no self.“”
— Adyashanti
To live in a story
is to live in a moment
that is not now
for tales imply an ending
a past already wrote
but the present is ever written
gone when word hits page
or lips.
Once upon a time..
a time not now
in a place
not here
but gone
the now may be spoken of some day
when it has become then
but our moment our now
is happening so no tale
in the unfolding..
— G A Rosenberg
Shaping Stars by G A Rosenberg 
Vigil by G A Rosenberg 
Night Phoenix Abstract by G A Rosenberg 
