Are you so certain?

I for one can admit that I am not. I would, however, like to be free to disagree and to offer an alternative idea, one perhaps that is ancient. Truth doesn’t change, no matter how it is ridiculed as hateful or simplistic. I am flawed and prone to mistakes, how else am I to learn?

I feel we all must be allowed to have the truth revealed to us that way. In our own time, which is wildly different for each one of us. Instead of an overbearing group of power-mad supposed representatives that are certain of what is best for the common good, and coerces me to act in a way defined by them. From my experience, the common good is best served by me acting for my own benefit through the discovery of a better me which has occurred from trial and error.

I am all for taking care of those that truly cannot help themselves. I am opposed to helping others that take advantage of the hard work of productive people in our society, through unaccountable programs created to help but cost more to administer than provide actual help to those that really need it.

Can men and women rule themselves? or must we assimilate into the Borg

 

I understand that is a grotesque oversimplification but is it too far-fetched? I think not. There is a not often revealed downside to collectivism, that being the “leaders” don’t have to do without as the masses must share all of their productivity to the collective. I am of the opinion that the state is subservient to the individual, not the other way around.

I believe that the “news” media have ruined their credibility, and it has become dependent on the audience they are preaching to. It is all agenda driven and we’ve been divided into extreme constituencies that are far from real. One must really dig to find the truth and may never find it. What if the masses realized that they could do more without the interference of the government. Then the politicians and corrupt media would become irrelevant, which is precisely why people are losing their minds. I am content to be uncertain and irrelevant so I am a threat to the collective.

Turn away from what you are rushing towards, embrace that which you are running from-Yourself

Appropriate

adjective

1. Suitable or proper in the circumstances

verb

1. Take (something) for one’s own
2. Devote (money or asset) to a special purpose

 

Appropriate some time, if you please, to consider if you think it appropriate, for our “representatives’ to appropriate our earnings and the earnings of future generations to their perception of what is appropriate?

I say NO! But what of it? In my humble opinion, we are no longer represented. Those we have elected, at least in national offices have been placed into a system that has corrupted them to engage in keeping the status quo, placing the electorate in perpetual debt to the whims of the ruling class.

It is a bit disheartening, however, I personally am responding with, acceptance of what is. Our education system has failed us and those who would best be able to affect a change are more concerned about which side is to blame or to be congratulated than what is truly best for the whole.

I will appropriate time to discern who best to vote for in coming elections

attribution of the featured image, other images courtesy of Pexels

I’ll leave you with this

 

 

It is possible!

However hard it may be to fathom, one thing I must do above all else is to wholeheartedly accept what is. Eliminating or changing unhealthy ideas, behaviors or situations from my life are other options, but. I must accept that things are exactly the way they are supposed to be at this moment.

As soon as I can embrace this acceptance the natural flow of constant change allows natural joy to permeate my being.

 

Another season

Suffering is derived from resistance to what is.

Until then may your day be as it should be.

Collaboration at its finest

It’s a Miracle

Have you ever considered how our eyes work? I have been. Light reflected from whatever we are looking at enters, to be interpreted and categorized that ultimately elicits a response within. This post relates closely to the previous Aprehensive

I am in awe and embrace the wonder and mystery of what I consume through my eyes. What I read, symbols arranged in a way that I have been taught to mean certain ideas, concepts, etc. Then are further digested through the prism of my conditioning, preferences, and experience.

Then introduce mindfulness to contemplate my response to these things I am looking at, as an impartial observer of myself.

Am I awake, does it matter, should I care?

It all certainly, in my soul feels like it could not have happened by chance.

How it is all attributed and used to influence are astounding.

Feeling blessed and at peace, which is not the result of my natural self’s mechanisms

What say you?

Aprehensive

Since beginning my endeavor into writing, I have become interested in words, their meaning and origin. I have always been very literal and find this word curious.

Aprehensive

adjective

adjective: apprehensive

1. 1.

   anxious or fearful that something bad or unpleasant will happen.

   “he felt apprehensive about going home”

   synonyms:

   anxious, worried, uneasy, nervous, concerned, agitated, tense, afraid, scared, frightened, fearful; More

   antonyms:

   confident

2. 2.

   archaic literary

   relating to perception or understanding.

Personally, I find the archaic definition more appealing to my literal mind.

The ability to apprehend, grasp or comprehend an idea or concept. I don’t quite understand how the word became to mean something related to fear and anxiety.

Maybe someone out there can help me to understand.

Meanwhile here is more from my visit to MIA Minneapolis Insitute of Art

accompanied by my lovely daughters.

Siblings, how can they love and be repulsed by each other simultaneously?

Cheesy right?

Have a seat

A grand location for the exhibition of expression

Firearms as art?…She’ll never forgive me, but after all isn’t it a parent’s job to embarrass their kids?

They will never know what it was like without a mobile device… It was so hard lols

Apprehending what love is and to experience it in all of its eternal facets

There you have it. You may now carry on as you were.

Until then if you please, enjoy a taste of mine.

 

Winners and losers

In the interest of being able to persuade others to their side and hopefully arrive at a majority, in the perceived interest of their constituents. A division is created. What if someone has a great idea for most if not everybody, except that this someone has the opposition’s party affiliation? It then becomes evil and the greatest atrocity ever imagined. Sadly it cuts both ways.

From my perspective and in action. I choose to attempt indifference to the insanity going on in our nation’s capital. My aim is to smile and to be at peace with myself. Be kind to, and understanding of those I encounter. Help when I am able, say no when I cannot. This I pray will ripple out from here and impact more than I am aware of.

Comming to grips with and accepting that no one does anything that is not motivated by self-interest is key to understanding the motivations of leaders and followers. We all desire to be on the winning side. But what if the people you follow are not being completely honest? They’re human and are self-interested, so I’ll just attend to what I have influence over, namely me.

With gratitude, generosity, and love. Peace be with you all and may God bless all you endeavor.

 

On my list

My list of things I am grateful for, living in Minnesota. The Mall of America is on there. This place is such a blast. I enjoy looking for things I might like to buy or be given should I be fortunate enough. There is also the opportunity to buy presents for those I care about. There is also a place at the center of it all, created for children of all ages. That being Nicolodeon Universe, a full-sized amusement park.

Here are just a few places I like to shop for myself and others. I’ll leave it up to you to ponder, which are for who.

I was here over the weekend and wanted to express my gratitude for being close to the wonderful place. I know that the time to be here is when most are still getting up. Of course, there are many other places of interest and utility, too many to list in my brief post. It’s just fun for me.

Bless all of you who have made it this far

Jeff

The Objective Seems Obvious

I find the writings of Thomas Merton a profound foretaste to what is painfully obvious to me in today’s media and political and cultural discourse.

“A message to Poets” Thomas Merton  February 1964

“COLLECTIVE LIFE is often organized on the basis of cunning, doubt, and guilt. True solidarity is destroyed by the political art of pitting one man against another and the commercial art of estimating all men at a price. On these illusory measurements, men build a world of arbitrary values without life and meaning, full of sterile agitation. To set one man against another, one life against another, one work against another, and to express the measurement in terms of cost or of economic privilege and moral honor is to infect everybody with the deepest metaphysical doubt. Divided and set up against one another for the purpose of evaluation, men immediately acquire the mentality of objects for sale in a slave market. They despair of themselves because they know they have been unfaithful to life and to being, and they no longer find anyone to forgive the infidelity.”

To be unaffected by praise or blame

Hope is not lost!

I have been blessed with the gift of being a drug addict. In being led as a byproduct of despair of epic proportions found a community where every walk of life come together in common search for a remedy for the Hell of active addiction. The differences that would divide us, in the workplace or social setting are forgotten for a common objective.

The recovery, recovering, recovered from whatever affliction is the same. In my opinion is a spiritual malady and the solution is an awakening to the Love that is inside all of us.

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will apparently be worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

That had been my exact experience with the people I encounter in “The recovery community.”

XIX

I am reflecting on receiving my 19-year medallion this past Saturday’s monthly sobriety recognition and speaker meeting. Ther was an Al-Anon speaker and an AA speaker. It very enlightening to hear the perspective of the emotions of the loved ones of addicts and alcoholics. The AA speaker was very good as well.

I am struck recently that, there is no more original thought. It has all been thought, proclaimed and disseminated throughout time. The thoughts and writings merely seem to be presented in a slightly different way and offered to a new generation.

Of course, this is all only a matter of opinion and I am most certainly wrong.

Here are a couple examples, where I feel as though I have felt these things all my life and are somewhat eternally true.

Heraclitus

Heraclitus or Heracleitos was a pre-Socratic Greek Philosopher he lived from c. 535 – c. 475 BC her is some of his writing

“The majority of men think they see and do not. They believe they listen but they do not hear. They are absent when present, because in the act of seeing and hearing they substitute the familiar cliches of familiar prejudice for the new and unexpected truth that is being offered to them. They complacently imagine they are receiving a new light, but in the very moment of apprehension they renew their obsession with the old darkness, which is so familiar that it and it alone, appears to be light to them.”

Sound familiar? It does to me. I cant say why or where, but it seems universal.

And the next is an excerpt from The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton

(pp. 367)

“Since there is no genuine creativity apart from God, the man who attempts to be a “creator” outside of God and independent of him is forced to fall back on magic. The sin of the wizard is not so much that he usurps and exercises a real preternatural power, but that his postures travesty the divine by degrading man’s freedom in absurd and servile manipulations of reality.”

Any of that ring a bell? Seems, to me we are surrounded by those that tell us down is up and black is white and bad is good. I’m happy to be on a quest toward emptiness.

God Bless You-Namaste

 

I have no use for it.

As I feel the pain, anguish, and despair. I remain silent in solitude.

“But before we come to that which is unspeakable and unthinkable, the spirit hovers on the frontiers of language, wondering whether or not to stay on its own side of the border, in order to have something to bring back to other men. This is a test of those who wish to cross the frontier. If they are not ready to leave their own ideas and their own words behind them, they cannot travel further.” Thomas Merton No Man is an Island

If I had not been broken to the point of utter despair, by the Grace of God. I would have no use for the forgiveness, comfort, and peace available to me from that source. God so loved me,  to allow me to attempt every avenue of escape from my true self and Him that I might, and did collide with reality.

Bald Eagle

Now I can fly. Suffer the feelings, without want of escape from them. I can contemplate the peace I have been blessed with and radiate the love, the Perfect Love I can summon when chaos erupts. It is truly available to any and all that find a need for it.

Remember those for whom you care. Tell them what they mean to you and scatter your love and light, as that is the only solution to dispell Hate and Darkness