In The Light

All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why…James Thurber

Living, loving, learning…..For me, if I am not doing something to better myself continually by staying curious and informed I have no right to criticize, doing nothing only serves to weaken me, complacency is a fatal condition. I believe when I stop asking questions and exploring the world I live in with awe and wonder it will be time for me to die. If I am not moving forward and adapting to change I will get left behind, because when I stop to rest and admire my handy work the world goes on without me. It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.

Many things lead me back to where my inquisitive nature started and those that influenced me the most are still the ones I seem to be drawn back to. After living for a while I recognize how truths stay and sometimes the new is not always better. Other times I am looking at the same ideas only with different labels. Original psychology is even rarer with regard to motivations of man, love or money. And money is not that important if love is the motivator, the source of most of the power struggles in the world are over the latter. So, if I am not loving and learning, I am not living.

Attempting to articulate abstract thought and translate into digestible concepts that can be easily understood in everyday language, I have found, is no easy feat. Love is particularly tricky. If I have succeeded, thank Him, if I failed, pray for me. But try I must, as Mother Teresa and Gandhi both suggested….."be that change you want to see in the world," love is a verb indicating action or state, the light to see positive change.
An old Zen saying….when the student is ready (to learn), the teacher will teach. Carl Rogers…. "you know I don't believe that anyone has taught anything to anyone. I question the efficacy of teaching. The only thing I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat." The old lead a horse to water, thirst thing.

That's all I can do….I can't force anyone to eat, no matter what. No teacher has taught anything to anyone. People learn for themselves. If I look up the word "educator," it comes from the Latin "educare" meaning to lead, to guide. That's what it means, to be enthusiastic yourself, to understand yourself and to put this stuff before others and to say, "look how wonderful this is" come and join me in eating of it. Auntie Mame said it best: "life is a banquet and most damned fools are starving to death.

I look for the same truths on many different levels, humanistic is what I relate to best; that's why I enjoy reading Mark Twain and Will Rogers so much; they were gifted reaching everyone with simple plain language based on common sense, intellectually sound rationale. Cervantes was another with witty sayings that our modern language is peppered with, I was surprised at how many of our everyday sayings we still use today that I found in his work. And he didn't come up with them probably, the sayings of that day, last still to this day, because they are still true, still socially relevant, truth is truth and doesn't change. Sometime Google Cervantes quotes and have a look, surprising, from ."Can we ever have too much of a good thing?" goodness and love can do no harm, only selfish applications. To "all is not gold that glitters", but one of my favorites by Cervantes is this one about love..…"'Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it." a brilliant truthful observation from 16th century Spain, or is it 21st century universal wisdom?

But with the folksy styles I also have to have an intellectual point of view to tell me what my spiritual side has already recognized inside to bridge the gap between, body, mind, and spirit, kind' a like doubting Thomas, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Jesus was like, dude, have you not heard anything I just said? "I am the way and the truth and the life! No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." oh, ok.

Pitirim Sorokin, a giant in the field of sociology, wrote in his book the ways and power of love : "the sensate minds, our minds, emphatically disbelieve in the power of love. It appears to us something illusionary…we call it self-deception, the opiate of a people's mind, idealistic thoughts and unscientific illusion. We are biased against all theories that try to prove the power of love in other positive forces in determining human behavior and personality, in influencing the course of biological, social, moral and mental evolution, in affecting the direction of historical events, in shaping social institutions and cultures." he then proceeds to lay out scientific studies to support why this is so.

Well, what a shame if everyone believed something exists only by being shown statistically. I feel sorry for you indeed if you are ruled only by what you can measure, because I am intrigued by the immeasurable. I am intrigued by the dreams, not only by what is here. I really don't give a damn what is here. I can see it. That's fine, measure it if you want to, spend your life measuring it. There is so much that we don't see, we don't touch, we don't feel, we don't understand. If that's not looking for love in all the wrong places, then I don't know what is. Well, maybe I do…..

Reminds me of the fellow that was outside one night looking down frantically searching and searching, looking and looking for his lost keys. Soon another fellow came by and ask: what are you looking for? Maybe I can help. I have lost my keys would you please help me look for them? I know they are around here somewhere. Sure I'll help you look. And together they look for awhile, finally the one ask, exactly where were you standing when you lost them? Oh well, right over there, in the house….. In the house! What the….? Why sir…. then, are we out here looking for them like fools? Well, uh, uh, I don't have any lights inside the house and it's dark in there, but out here there is plenty of light……

My God of love and truth is that way too, love is impossible to see without a spiritual flashlight found inside myself, my house. That light will go everywhere with me, shines on others, helps recognize other peoples light and together the light only gets brighter for more people to see. All I have to do is ask. I will never find the keys to happiness or heaven looking outside in the world unless I find the eternal light inside me first to see them with. In this light, let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness. Me loving me is me loving you. My battle against apathy begins with me.

We assume that reality is the box we've been put in, and it's not! I assure you it's not. Open the door sometime and look outside and see how much there is. The dream of today will be the reality of tomorrow. Yet, we have forgotten how to dream, how to love.

A few quotes from the gospel of St. John from the man that taught me to love myself…"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life,.….A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light. It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light, The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going….Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light,"…. Hey buddy, got a light?

My hats off to those great authors, preachers and teachers, past and present, that have managed to penetrate my socially encrusted pea brain, to unlock a door to a room with a better view of me, man and God. I have great hope in tomorrow. And my hope lies in the following three things….Truth, youth, and love. In order to achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die.

Keep fighting the good fight, with your minds as weapons!!
………………kosmicdebris……………………………