Fox’s message is a synthesis of Otto Rank, Aquinas, Rumi, Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich wisdom with the “throat grabbing” hook: “pessimism is a philosophy of hatred that springs from self-hate.” Wow, “must read” or “must listen” for me!
Otto Rank, aka the “father of humanistic psychology“, is known for his writings on creative will and relationship & existential therapy. Something else worth checking out when you have the time.
When eyes meet, smiles greet, hearts entwine, over time. Body language, ever so sure, instantly knows a pulling allure. Looking back, forever say, we met, we clicked fell in love that day. No way of telling what’s in store, talking eyes speak you’re caught, wanting more.
I was fortunate to walk four dogs yesterday in downtown St. Louis: Tic Tac, Mr. Pants, Nectarine and Revolver. What a joy on this mid-80-degree (F) day.
Tic Tac – a gorgeous lady – 7yr. old 55lb. female Terrier
Mr. Pants – a Pit Bull on a Corgi body
Nectarine – a joyful tripod – 3yrs. old 42lbs. male Terrier
Revolver – an energetic playmate – 2yr. old 48lbs. male Terrier
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In the right home, each of these dogs would be a furever fur friend.
If you cannot adopt a dog, please adopt an animal rescue shelter.
I have always believed that learning more was a mission as I am sure that the more I will know, the better I will be able to help, serve, and take care of those I follow and support.
Learning is an activity that gives impressive results when done with attention and commitment. And the positive thing is that we can learn from everyone and everything, every single moment of our lives.
Image taken from Internet
Over the years, I have developed a way to learn better, to foster curiosity, interest, commitment, motivation, and purpose.
Learning can be the key to whatever we want and hope to achieve. It’s how we set ourselves free from what limits us, allowing us to help other people.
We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to be ourselves. As Thich Nhat Hanh would say: “be beautiful, be yourself.”
Today’s senryu: Good Enough Faith
clear, longing and then
confident, unstoppable –
one step at a time
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Vanessa Zuisei Goddard, author of Still Running: The Art of Meditation in Motion, has written another provocative article for Tricycle magazine. Check it out here:
Some people define the “present moment” as an intersection of the “here and now” with the “ultimate” dimension of eternity. Today I’m recommending an article from yesterday’s Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations AND the reference to the podcast An Introduction to Depression and Spiritual Healing with James Finley.
The Divine Dimension of Life (meditations@cac.org)
CAC teacher and psychotherapist James Finley provides a helpful image for us to think about how our lives and struggles intersect with the ever-present love of God:
Here is an image that helps me think about spirituality as a resource in the healing of depression. Imagine drawing a horizontal line. This line represents our experiences of ourselves and our passage through time, from birth to death. This is our human experience going through our lives. As we go through life, we seek to experience happiness, fulfillment, security for ourselves and others, which creates feelings of well-being and gratitude. But likewise, life is such that we’re not always able to live in conditions conducive to happiness. There can be traumatizations, there can be betrayals, there can be losses, there can be injustices that take their toll. We can withstand anything as long as the center holds. But it gets really scary when these invasive, hurtful, and threatening energies that are going on in our lives start getting near the center. We start to lose our balance. We start to lose ourselves in a state of crisis.
The spiritual dimension is this: We now imagine drawing a vertical line intersecting right in the middle of the horizontal line. The vertical line is the divine dimension, divinity, God, the Holy, the sacred. And the infinite love of God, the Holy, is welling up, presence-ing itself and pouring itself out as our lives on the horizontal line. This is the God-given, godly nature of every breath and heartbeat. It is the sun moving across the sky, our breathing in and breathing out, the miracle of being alive and real in the world. Religious experience is the experience of tasting it and realizing this miracle. By following a path of faith and reassurance, God illumines us on the horizontal line. The difficulty is that as depression increases, it closes off experiential access to that vertical line, the upwelling of God’s presence in our life.
If we have religious faith and we experience depression, often our faith doesn’t mean anything to us anymore. It ceases to be relevant. Not only do we feel we have lost our own way in life, but we’ve also lost the felt sense of God being present in our lives. The absence of feeling God’s presence radicalizes the sense of our loss. A lot of therapy, then, isn’t only about moving along the horizontal line to reduce the symptoms of depression—although it is that—but doing it in such a way that it starts to open up the depth dimension. The infinite love of God can come welling up, and something of the depth dimension can begin to shine through in our dilemmas. It isn’t just that we’re caught in the middle of a dilemma, but we have a felt sense of knowing that we’re not alone.
The third refuge which may be more valuable to some depending upon your inclination. Thank you, Lynn, for explaining the difference between the refuges and the need they each fulfill. _/\_
And finally we come to the sangha as refuge. The word sangha has more than one meaning, but at its root, it means the community of practitioners, whether ordained or lay, male or female. Originally it referred only to the ordained monks and nuns, but the Buddha made clear that those who had taken refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, whether lay or ordained, were necessary for his teachings to thrive in the world. He called them the four-fold sangha, meaning all of those who had undertaken his path of practice. The community of practitioners is varied and widespread, but it is a community of people who support and take inspiration from each other.
In modern times, the word sangha has been appropriated to mean any group of spiritual seekers, but for the purpose of talking about taking refuge, we refer to those whose lives are oriented towards the…
Life is bewildering. Life isn’t as easy as 1 + 1 = 2. Sometimes 1 + 1 = 1 or even 3.
Are relationships meant to be? How do people choose one set of friends over another, or, more specifically, one person over another? How does love work?
Today’s senryu: Three Love Questions
Who loved who first? You,
me, or the spirit between?
Relationship bound?
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“Bounded
If the sequence of real numbers (an) is such that all the terms are less than some real number M, then the sequence is said to be bounded from above. In other words, this means that there exists M such that for all n, an ≤ M. Any such M is called an upper bound. Likewise, if, for some real m, an ≥ m for all n greater than some N, then the sequence is bounded from below and any such m is called a lower bound. If a sequence is both bounded from above and bounded from below, then the sequence is said to be bounded.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence
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“THE MATHEMATICS OF LOVE
I look at relationships. What’s different about what I do, compared with most psychologists, is that for me the relationship is the unit, rather than the person. What I focus on is a very ephemeral thing, which is what happens between people when they interact. It’s not either person, it’s something that happens when they’re together. It is like a structure that they’re building by the way they interact. And I think of it that way, almost like a fleeting architectural fluid form that people are creating as they talk to each other, as they smile, as they move.” https://www.edge.org/conversation/john_gottman-the-mathematics-of-love
I’m weeks away from completing a ten-month animal chaplaincy program and another two months away from completing a three-year Order of Interbeing aspirancy program. Exciting times now and ahead.
Today’s senryu: Numerology Again
how much can I hold
will this cup overflow – and
if it does, then what?
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See a numerology prediction for me below. How do the numbers add up for you?
“Personal 5 Year In 2023: Your transformation awaits
Are you ready to shake things up? Last year you were tasked with the rather unrelenting burden of a 4 year, which requires you to put your nose to the grindstone and get serious about life. You may not have had much room to slack off or to veer from the path in front of you, but 2023 is a 5 year. This is the number of freedom and change. It’s safe to say that things will shift drastically for you over the next twelve months.
The year ahead is all about making adjustments and exploring the options available to you, and if you don’t like what you’re working with, then perhaps it’s time to strike out and create some new possibilities for yourself. Chances are good that your life will look markedly different at the end of 2023 than it did at the beginning. The main thing to remember is that it’s wiser to embrace these changes than to try to stop them, because the more you resist, the more complicated things will become for you down the road. The universe is using these changes to get you to the place you’re meant to be, so think of 2023 as a cosmic recalibration with lots of adventures to be had.”
May we use the energy of meditation to resonate with the energy of the Universe, inspiring a global awareness towards greater mindfulness, compassion, and harmony.
In a fast-paced and always-connected world, finding those helpful, blissed, and essential moments of inner peace and stillness has almost become a luxury. However, meditation has gained popularity year after year, thanks to the many advantages it has.
To celebrate this ancient practice and its profound positive impact on our entire being, World Meditation Day invites people from all walks of life to unite in a collective pursuit of inner tranquillity, improved well-being, and increased awareness.
World Meditation Day, observed annually on May 21st, is a powerful reminder of the huge potential we have to tap into the very wellspring of holistic peace that resides within our beings. This celebration also serves as a…
Life Matters 