My friend Reya, who is an extraordinary healer and massage therapist, one of my teachers, and, like me, is one who enjoys walking around the neighborhood observing, thinking, and taking photos, has just started a new blog with her thoughts on healing. It is sure to be mind-expanding.
I found on first and second and even third reading this declaration a little confusing. It may be that something was lost in translation (from the Bulgarian–a completely unknown language to me).
It does not say that to each his own is freedom, but that we should have freedom AND to each his own.
I think this means that true freedom is not everyone getting his or her own. Rather, out of freedom, we choose the binds of community and sometimes elect to forego complete individualism so that we can maximize the fulfillment of each individual as a member of the community.
To each his own as the only governing principle does not permit anything other than suspicious and antagonistice relationship. Honoring that everyone wants to be recognized as a free individual but that getting the benefit and support of community requires freely choosing to submit, commit, and work to a relationship in which maximum individuality thrives but the community of individuals is greater than any of its individual members–that’s a great and worthy dance.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I was looking at an age spot on my forearm the other day and wondered whether I should get a tattoo to cover or incorporate it. “Something small and modest, but with meaning,” I thought. “Something that would not admit to the original reason. Perhaps a realistic version of the smallest of butterflies.” Then I thought without any apparent trigger, “what about a firefly?” When they are not lit up, they look like the kind of bug we would swat at or try to avoid, but at night, when the firefly glows, it is magic.
How many things are there that seem ordinary or even distasteful until we open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to see their full and true essence?
I do not know whether I will get the tattoo. But I hope that those that can (those with backyards) will take a few simple steps to make a home for some fireflies.
Whatever the season, I notice the beauty on my walk to work. I see what remains the same and what changes. I invite the sweetness I feel arising spontaneously from my daily walks though the neighborhood, which, familiar as they are, still feel like vision quests, to come into how I experience the rest of my encounters with the world.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
What are you going to do about it?
Ruda, who is both the ancestor of Shiva and another name for Shiva, is known as the howler. Rudra is wild and fierce. Rudra rages. I heard Paul Muller-Ortega recently describe Rudra. He said Rudra rages, but offered that there are lots of things against which to rage, such as injustice and inflicted suffering.
The idea of Shiva/Rudra raging has filled my contemplations for the last week. The questions that arise for me is “what is divinely inspired rage?” “When is fierceness or rage serving to expand love and compassion rather than just destroying the self or others?”
When are rage and destruction necessary to optimize the flow of energy? I think of Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi. I think of a surgeon removing a tumor. When I think of the ongoing war in Iraq; the newest reports of torture; the potential that corporate interests, ignorance, and bigotry may completely undermine this country’s coming to agreement on providing basic health care for all, I think that living a quiet life is not fully engaging a life of the spirit. How do I find a place of non-attached, but fierce action? How do I find Rudra and not get distracted by personal desires for outcome (and personal desires for simple peace and quiet)? When should I howl, to whom should I howl, and what?
This rage, this fierceness, must come from a grounding in the heart with the discrimination of study and practice. If I cannot find it myself, can I at least support those with the courage and wisdom to be directly engaged?
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Thank you for the link!