NEWSLETTER FROM COLIN'S SOUL FOOD KITCHEN: TIME IS SHORT! DON'T WASTE IT
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL REALIZATION? The belief that you are spirit? No, that’s a thought. Spiritual realisation is to see clearly what I perceive, experience, think or feel is not ultimately who I am: that I can’t find myself (my true essence) in all those things because they continuously pass away. The Buddha was probably the first human being to see this clearly and so non-self became one of the central tenets of his teachings.
The ‘ego’, is a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. Instead of adding time to yourself, remove time. The elimination of the ego is the elimination of time from your consciousness. It is the only true spiritual path. Remove the ego and what is left is the light of consciousness in which everything comes and goes. That’s Being: that’s a deeper, truer, ‘I’. When I know myself as that, whatever happens in my life is no longer of absolute but relative importance.
The person with a secular mentality feels themselves to be the center of the universe. Yet, they are likely to suffer from a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance because they know that they are but one human of among seven billion ‘others’-all feeling themselves to be the center of things- scratching out an existence on a medium sized planet circling a small star among countless stars in a galaxy lost among countless galaxies.
The person with a spiritual mentality, on the other hand, does not feel themselves to be the center of the universe. They consider the center to be elsewhere and ‘other’. Yet, they are unlikely to feel lost and insignificant precisely because they draw their significance and meaning from their relationships, their connection with that center of the ‘other’.
Are we the stars of our own movies, our own personal narratives and are we obsessed by these particular narratives, this ‘secular’ perspective? And does it cause us suffering? You betcha!
LIFE IS SHORT: DON’T WASTE IT
Yes, getting old can suck. I can attest to that. But, the secret of life is to die before you die so that in the end you will have regrets for never having lived!
There are three events in a person’s life: Birth, Life, and Death. We are not aware of being born, we die in pain and we forget to live.
The secret to life is the realization that living in the present moment gives us more time. If you have ever been in nature alone for a period of time, you will eventually feel as if time stands still. And it does! Why? Because you have slipped from ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ mode and into the eternity of ‘being’ mode. The suspension of thought is to just ‘be’ and it gives us more time.
‘Live as if you were going to die tomorrow and learn as if you were going to live forever. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself serving others. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do is in harmony.’ Mahatma Gandhi
Let go and accept the present moment, including how you are feeling and what you think is happening. For these few precious moments, don’t try to change anything, just breathe and let go. Die to need to have anything be different at this moment. In this moment allow your heart and mind to allow this moment to be exactly as it is and allow yourself to be exactly as you are. Then, when you are ready, move in the direction your heart tells you to go, mindfully and with resolve.
‘Do every act of your life as if it were your last. It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig. And you will give yourself relief if you do every act of your life as if it were the last. ‘ Marcus Aurelius
‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of true art and science. I live in that solitude that is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better. Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living things and the whole of nature and its beauty.’ Albert Einstein
‘Poetry soothes the soul and emboldens the heart to accept Mystery.’ John Keats
We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often ‘life’ is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.
Appreciate the fact that life is complex. Abandon the urge to simplify everything; to look for formulas and easy answers, and begin to think multidimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life. We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often ‘life’ is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery. Be alive to the Mystery! t
There is no worse bitterness than to reach the end of your life and realize you have not lived.
By taking a few moments to ‘die on purpose’ to the rush of time while you are still living, you free yourself to have time for the present. By dying in this way, you actually become more alive now. There is nothing passive about it. And when you decide to move, to act, it’s a different kind of doing because you’ve stopped.
It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body, for it is better to die than to live badly. The subject matter of the art of living is each person’s own life. What really frightens and disturbs us is not external events themselves but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. ‘ Seneca
‘To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. Most people die before they are born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies.’
‘Old age is, believe me, a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as a spectator.’ Confucius
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies?
‘To be old is glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin. There are three principles in a man’s being and life: the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-man occurs when I don’t say what I mean, and I don’t do what I say. ‘ Martin Buber
‘A human being would certainly not grow to be 70 or 80 years of age, if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be a pitiable appendage to life’s morning. ‘ Carl Jung
‘Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purposes. Through pride, we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience, a still, small voice says to us something is out of tune. We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.’ Carl Jung
‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could learn what it had to teach me or not, so that when I came to die, I would discover that I had not lived. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.’ Henry David Thoreau
Aging is only a number, it’s your attitude that can bring you joy and happiness. I find myself in the precarious position of being too old to rock and roll, but too young to die!
THE JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE:
We shall not cease from exploration and in the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ T.S. Eliot
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice- “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do. It was a wild night and the road was full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little as you left the voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheet of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do-determined to save the only life you could save
You take a final step and, look, you’re there! You’ve arrived at the one place all your drudgery was aimed for: This common ground where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone. What did you want to be? You’ll remember soon. You feel tender under a burning glass, a luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing under a cracked horizon, holding it firm for the arrival of stars in time with your heartbeats.
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the heartbeat of the world; to match your nature with Nature. The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.
Like wind, etching rock, you’ve made an impression on the self you were by having come all this way through all this welter under your own power, though your traces on a map would make an unpromising meandering lifeline. (Yea, no kidding!) What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later, telling it haltingly like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream under the last hill where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind to unburden yourself of elements along elementary paths
You’ve earned this warn-down, hard, incredible sight called Here and Now. Now, what you make of it means everything, means starting over: The life in your hands is neither here nor there but getting there, so, you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another journey without regret- forever, being your own peaceable kingdom, the end of endings.
And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead- if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging-there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted-each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, each morning. Whether or not, you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not, you have ever decided to pray. Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born.
=========================================================================== BE YOUR OWN LAMP: SEEK NO OTHER REFUGE
We shall not cease from exploration and in the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’ T.S. Eliot
I fell in love with the dharma- with the teachings and the sutras and memorized the wisdom passed down through the ages. I sat in meditation, but I did nothing but think about it. I thought about concepts and liberation from my own suffering, and I wandered farther and farther from the truth. I talked about it and wrote about it and my practice went down the toilet.
I couldn’t concentrate on anything-let alone my own breath. Then I heard a whisper- read something or gained an insight. I came to realize that one can easily starve to death trying to eat a cookbook!
My ideas about the dharma- the teachings of the Wise One were standing in my way- for he said, ‘Be your own lamp. Seek no other refuge.’ The Buddha
But undaunted, the Self- Anointed Patron Saint of Lost Causes says, ‘I ain’t giving up that easy.’
Just as reframing the ordinary act of breathing leads to a change in our sense of self, the simple act of sitting quietly and observing our passing thoughts and feelings creates a radical shift in identity; an experience of transcending the ego.
It is absurd that I neglect my meditation. I have spent the last three days sitting and worrying and getting frustrated. It’s like a muscle. If you’re working out at the gym, and you get in great shape, if you stop going even for a couple of weeks, you’re back where you started. So I made a resolution.
Here I sit, and here I will sit whenever the chaos swirls around me, I told myself the next evening, as I began my meditation. But on this particular evening I was prepared for them. I sat on my throne in the middle of my devastated kingdom and remained motionless. As my wounds appeared and hurled their habitual barbs and accusations, I forced myself to breathe ever more slowly and examine them with clinical objectivity.
Watching the whirlwind that occupied the centre of my sense of self, I was able to gradually change from being the dis-eased one to being the compassionate- objective observer who can transcend the chaos and remain calm. In the middle of that battleground that is our personality, we discover a peaceful kingdom.
We are the sane ones in the madhouse of our personality. We are the subject who has the ability to transcend the predicates and accidents of our psyche. The more we experience and then disidentify from the wounds and brokenness of our historical condition, the more we gain an identity that is not at the mercy of passing thoughts and feelings.
We are that being who has the ability to transcend our mental- emotional-bodily conditioning: the one who can escape the imprisonment of our ancient character armour. We become the one who is not determined by yesterday.
Music in the Soul can be heard by the Universe. When you are content to simply be yourself, and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. I have just three things to teach- simplicity, patience, and compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. He who is content is rich. Mastering yourself is true power.
Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you. He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.
At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve. Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides
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FREE, SO FREE, DAY AFTER DAY
I live under a craggy peak, living peacefully in a grass hut, listening to birds for music,
Clouds are my best neighbors.
Below a pure spring where I refresh body and mind:
Above, towering pines
And oaks that provide shade and brushwood.
Free, so free, day after day-
I never want to leave. Ryokan
For all that read this, my prayer for you is that you could live peacefully in a grass hit, listening to birds for music, with clouds as your best neighbors with towering pines above you and that you will live free, so free, day after day, so that when it comes time to leave you shall have no regrets and smile at a life well-lived.
Yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision
But today well-lived
In the present moment
Makes all of our yesterdays
Full of beautiful memories
And all of our tomorrows
Visions of hope. Colin
When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world in my arms. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder If I have made of my life something particular and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world. Mary Oliver
To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal- To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and when it’s time to let it go, let it go.
As I have come to accept the state of my own mortality, I only find joy and solace in the great outdoors. Somehow, the peace, beauty, and stillness of nature obliterates all traces of my bewildered self and my soul, and alive in the mystery, is at peace.’ R.W. Emerson