The use of the phrase just be it is for the purpose of stimulating a felt experience that moves past thought.  Recognizing that thought is based on linguistic constructs, our own personal creations from past or anticipated events, we can see that a 100% present response must necessarily step from the linguistic intellectual experience to that of “no thought” or what some have called “no mind”.  This distinction can be made with any action, once we’ve come to a level of proficiency where full surrender to the unknown occurs.  There’s a sense of faith so strong that the individual gives thanks for the entry to oneness, in complete peace it’s occurred, outside notions of time and space, before the actions undertaken.  This has been referred to as “peak experience”, “flow”, and other names designating that point where all distinction between the actor and that which is acted on is broken down into the unified experience.  We can also see this in our distinctions between religious dogma (the realm of intellectual, thought, belief) and that of the spiritual (the ‘felt’ sense of unity with all).  Again, there’s a deep faith that all is well within the present moment, as is captured in A Course in Miracles:

The savior’s vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself.  It sees no past in anyone at all.  And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared to look on only what the present holds.  It cannot judge because it does not know.  And recognizing this, it merely asks, “What is the meaning of what I behold?”  Then is the answer given.  And the door held open for the face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of the Christ in you. 

Chapter 31, VII, V13.

This felt experience of the divine holds back judgment, in complete faith to the awe and wonder of the unfolding present moment.  Released from the chains of thought and complex mental processing, we enter the core of being.  In his book The Translucent Revolution,  Arjuna Ardagh describes it as follows:

When translucents are presented with a new situation, a spontaneous, unresisted response arises that is not questioned.  When we can see the world without the filter of belief, it becomes perfectly obvious what to do in each moment.  Since we are not resisting anything, life itself keeps asking us to play, to dance beyond our habits.  To resist this playful invitation would itself be to cling to a point of view.

We know what to do, not from weighing pros and cons, or making lists or asking people, but from an open clarity, where there is no belief for or against anything.  There is just quietness and a capacity to respond spontaneously to the present moment.  Life is doing itself through you, and there is no need to interfere. P. 103-4.

This inspired arrival to the present moment can be viewed as our deepest arrival to Being.  A Hawaiian kahuna, Uncle Less, has threatened to open a school for this, with a sign above the door stating “No BS”, the “bs” standing for “belief system”.

Whether at the preverbal level of the seven to nine month old child, the peak performance of a master, or that brief discovery of “no thought” that most have experienced in moments of wonder and awe, this arrival home to the core of being can be stimulated through the linguistic response of just be or just be it.

I’ve just witnessed the inauguration of our 44^th President Obama. While his campaign captured our need to go for higher ground in eliminating racial, gender, age and economic prejudice, the ceremony today finally made some very distinctive moves that take us to higher thought from a deeper heart. The invocation by Rick Warren moved us to find God in each other and all things, a plea to honor our interconnectedness rather than our secular selfishness. Obama made a plea to those of all religious backgrounds to work in common sense for the common good. He recognized the need for inclusion, particularly from those of Islamic faith. Can we challenge ourselves to someday move beyond our religious prejudice to welcome a president of Islamic or Buddhist faith?  Or how about a president who makes no claim to a specific religion?  Will it take another forty years to move to complete inter faith tolerance?  He challenged us to go beyond the shallow debate of big government vs. small government to the more important question of efficacy. Is it a government that works? Perhaps the greatest leap was to invite all countries of the world to unite in respect to one another lest we all fall. He eloquently took us past the nationalistic pride that’s lead us to force our values on other nations. In short, the ceremony beautifully took us to that divine place where we challenge our racial, gender, economic, age, religious, and nationalistic prejudice.  This was revolutionary, yet most TV commentaries I reviewed had tunnel vision on the racial prejedice breakthrough.

The theme of today’s ceremony challenged us to expand our sense of belonging. It challenged us to participate in the stewardship and healing of ourselves, family, state, nation and planet. It recognized the need for us to seek to understand. We were asked to see how violence comes from forcing others to our belief system. It took us to the ancient wisdom found in the power of listening and diplomacy over military force.

From Aretha Franklin’s tear jerking rendition of My Country ‘tis of Thee, to the invocation, swearing in and benediction, this event has re-birthed my faith and confidence in the underlying foundations of the human species. It was a day to honor all, no matter what our differences. It was a day to stay from judgment of others, to aim to see the good and dismiss the negative. it was a day to move from victim thinking to participant thinking. As the poet Elisabeth Alexander so eloquently put us in touch with the now, with our present moment authenticity, far from our mental illusions feeding violence and separation, we once again came back to the core question, “Have I loved well?”  Yes, it seems the message was, “We are One”.

I’m writing to you from a perspective of shared knowledge. We all have our life journey and it seems our success is directly related to our capacity to mindfully take nourishing food/actions or mindlessly take foods that leave us less than what we were before.

I want you to go to a very deep place. Just sit in silence for awhile, touching where you were before your parents were born in 1976 and 1981. Better yet, touch that place you were before Jane and I were born, 1950. It’s an empty space, but one that’s very whole. Breathe in, then breathe out. Do this several times, and feel deeply the ancestors riding on your shoulders. You can always do this. This is good, because you know you’re never alone. You always have the full support of our very big family riding with you. You also must know that there are no secrets. When you think no one is watching, think again.

I’m so lucky to get to meet you in your first life months. You both came with such courage. These times are changing so fast and it will be important for you to be very attentive to what you let into your mind and body. There are so many that want you to loose this attentiveness so they can capture your attention for their own benefit. This will make your journey more difficult, possibly slowing it down for many years. Never forget that you came into your body complete. You came in whole, healed to the beautiful interconnection of all things. It’s a natural process to separate, to develop a sense of identity, to feel good about what you can accomplish. Yet, I want you to know that your life journey will be about the speed you come back to wholeness…to the felt sense of connection with God in and of all things. This awareness will help you face any situation with composure that will be a shining light for others.

The test of correct action and thought is how you feel “after” it. For example, if you eat a sugar filled candy bar, it’s pleasurable in the mouth, but when it hits the belly it may not feel so good. It’s also hard on your teeth, disrupts your natural metabolism, and may add unwanted weight to your body. So pay great attention to whether or not the action/thought nourishes or weakens you. Most actions taken primarily for pleasure may feel good at the moment, but inevitably leave an unwanted consequence. This doesn’t mean we can’t be happy. When we consume a food or event with a deeper sense of appreciation, respecting how it takes us to a deeper, more authentic living, we live a life of stewardship. You’re mindfully consuming/acting from a sense of stewardship to those who came before you and those yet to come.

More and more commercials will hit you claiming you can’t be happy without this or that product or service. Mindful living will hold you in that space where you have all you need right now. Many will try to tell you that you aren’t enough. So many people miss their life journey because they think they’re not enough. They’re always trying to figure out how they can be sufficient. This thinking is bad medicine. It doesn’t nourish your body/mind and greatly hinders your spiritual path. Your mind/body has been given to you as a great honor. Very few get to manifest as human beings and the very least we can do is forever hold deep appreciation for this gift. Always fill the day with gratitude…for your eyes, legs, feet, nose, mobility, stomach, etc. You can never meet the limit of gratitude for what God has given you. Our job is to find the space to uncover the gift in what’s given, no matter what. Some days will be hard. You can hold onto the pain and grow misery, or you can move through the pain, grow, appreciate and return to joy.

We never know when we’ll leave these bodies, so take nothing for granted. Make your appointment with life, always challenging your body/mind to new ground. This is good food. Wasting time on entertainments and pleasures is quick fix joy, but again, once out of the moment of pleasure, it doesn’t feel good. Our job is to feel good. Smile as much as you can, even when you’re sad. And if you can’t, dedicate yourself to finding a pleasant memory or something to be grateful for. Happiness will return.

I like to look at gratitude for my body, my home, my relationships and my work. You chose your parents for very sacred reasons. They are to be always honored and respected by you. They will always be there to support you on your journey, even though some days it may not seem this way. You’ll sometimes find yourself in anger. Save it for another day, and I can assure you that that day simply won’t come.

Love your body always, no matter what. Love your home always, no matter what. Love your relationships always, from a perspective of best for all with harm to none. This can be especially difficult when others seem to want to hurt us. It may feel good to fight and defend, but when it’s over, looking back on the bigger effect, it never works. It’s not good food that nourishes. We are each other, so when I hurt someone else, I’m hurting myself. When I love someone else, I love myself. Dogs seem to understand this better than humans. I suspect you’ll have your fights. Just pay attention to how you feel after the event. It’s just like a good meal or a bad meal. The short term, sugar buzz high we get from attacking someone simply doesn’t last. The love we send to those who would harm us is very nourishing food.

We all have negative and positive emotion seeds. We’ll grow what we feed and a happy life always feeds positive emotions. If we’re not feeling positive it’s time to look at what we’re feeding those negative emotion seeds. If we’re positive, in love with our interconnection, we’re whole…healed. If we’re negative, in fear and separation, we’re dis-eased. Our biggest work is staying positive in our body, home, relationships and work. This is big work. Many work to get us to fear and conflict for their benefit. A great movie that shows how simple happiness can be is The Wizard of Oz. All Dorothy had to do was click her heals and she was home. Each breath in, that’s all you need to do…simply arrive to this moment, in gratitude. You’ll be happy.

Do challenge yourself, always. Aspire and grace is given. Meditate often. This is necessary so you can align yourself with your deepest intentions which may have existed before you entered this body of yours. Don’t get caught on notions of fixing what’s wrong, but do express yourself fully on projects that come from your inner knowing. This won’t be easy. It can be very frustrating at first, but always notice what attracts you and move to it. Reach out to others that resonate with your internal pull. Then, take action with that energy. Aspire and God’s grace will pour down upon you. The more you feel you’re expressing that which is going through you, and the more you say “yes” to it, the freer you’ll feel.

Living backwards is a good test of stewardship. Plan your day, always. Live each action in reverse, developing your faith and wisdom in correct speech and action. Would you do it the same if you had it to do over? If yes, this is a good test that you’re on a nourishing growth path. Again, living in joy, in mindful thought and action, moves from the heart with intention to what’s best for all with harm to none.

Your Great Grandfather Galen lived a life of “no complaint, no complaint”. This is an admirable life. Complaint and criticism may taste good in the moment, but always leave a bad aftertaste. Stay connected to hope. It’s the only antidote to cynicism, fear, and apathy. Mindful consumption is always moderate consumption. Galen also carried this wisdom, knowing that relationships are more difficult when living a life of excess.

Many will try to give you answers. The most dangerous words in our language are, “I know that”. Hold the mystery; always go deeper into the question. When you meditate, pray, practice affirmation and move in trust and curiosity, flexible and patient, magic doorways will open.

Hold the mystery, eat your food backwards, love your friends and family backwards, live your work backwards, and you’ll have a rich nourishing life. Aim to comfort, notions of material security and pleasure and your journey may be poisoned. Be authentic, do wholeheartedly, and you will have.

They Didn’t Teach This in School

I wish someone would have taught me the Second Law of Thermodynamics when I was in grade school.  It’s really not that difficult to understand and states, “Energy spontaneously tends to flow only from being concentrated in one place
to becoming diffused or dispersed and spread out.”    The ‘big deal’ about this is that,

“all types of energy spread out like the energy in a hot pan (unless somehow they’re hindered from doing so) They don’t tend to stay concentrated in a small space; they flow toward becoming dispersed if they can — like electricity in a battery or a power line or lightning, wind from a high pressure weather system or air compressed in a tire, all heated objects, loud sounds, water or boulders that are high up on a mountain, your car’s kinetic energy when you take your foot off the gas. All these different kinds of energy spread out if there’s a way they can do so.”  Frank Lambert has fully elaborated on this law at http://www.secondlaw.com/.  It’s a law that helps us accept the natural tendency for people, animals, elements and all things to disperse energy and break down.

This law explains scientifically why we ‘tend’ to engage in behavior that may not be healthy.  It can explain our tendency to not follow those instructions we know are healthy for us.  We can speed our ‘entropy’ through ingestion of toxic foods or drink, drugs, smoking, mindless TV, sexual misconduct, stealing, war and violence or any other number of common addictions.  Or we can slow the dispersion of energy by ‘practicing’ the teachings common to most ancient wisdom.  By slowing our disintegration we actually speed our evolution to a higher being. Interestingly, this process requires ‘action’, the application of certain ancient laws that have been passed down through the ages.  So what are these laws?

Perhaps the best test of whether an action was destructive or health promoting is a review from the future.  We place our actions in a higher level of consciousness when we project forward, concluding we’d take the actions again if given the chance.  It means our actions will carry integrity when we pause to project into the future an image of our satisfaction just prior to initiating the action.  With this increased consciousness we move from our lower self and inhibit actions stimulated from negative emotion.  Ancient wisdom often directs us to take actions on our neighbor as though that same action were to be taken upon ourselves (The Golden Rule).  The main Law of Huna wisdom states that the action must be done for the best interest of all concerned with no harm to anyone.  All ancient wisdom stresses the “practice” of gratitude and forgiveness, yet we continue to destroy ourselves and one another through our lack of appreciation and our inability to let grudges go.

Actually, the truth test on whether an action inhibits entropy can be found in whether it’s “working” or “not working”.  Clearly, fear and anger have shown to never be effective except when one’s immediate physical well being is threatened. 

Universal wisdom shows that ‘what we put attention to grows stronger’, so if we put our attention to ‘dis-ease’ and wishes to return to ‘normal’, we’ll grow our ‘dis-ease’.  If we put our attention to ‘wellness’ and those actions that promote health, we’ll grow in gratitude to health.  There are entire communities where elderly people recite their health ailments like a daily mantra.  As a society dedicated to ‘comfort’, ‘ease’ and ‘pleasure’, we’ve been raised outside the power in “use it or loose” function.  Without proper body use we’ve grown to a nation of obesity.  Our addiction to TV, computer games, spectator sports, gambling and other forms of ‘mindless’ consumption has resulted in the speeding up of our energy dispersion…of the entropy of a nation.

The solution to the natural pull of entropy is in “the practice” of the ancient laws.  Belief systems and thoughts without disciplined practice only hasten entropy.  When all ancient spiritual teaches direct us to reverence for life, why do we continue to war with one another?  When wisdom tells us conflict resolution comes only from love and listening to one another, why do we hold to the ‘belief’ that our security will come from weapons and war?  When we know our children’s happiness can always be sourced to gratitude, why do we not teach our children to say ‘thank you’ as a stimulus to their happiness?  When we know all grudges must be ‘cleared’ for health, why do we continue to prevent our healing?  When we know drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, fatty foods, sugar and heavily processed foods hasten our entropy, why do we continue to destroy our bodies with them?

It  boils down to ‘conscious’ living.  Do the actions we take hasten or slow the natural tendency for things to disperse energy?  It’s about ‘awareness’.  Perhaps the biggest steps we can take to slow our entropy would be regular meditation, exercises for strength, flexibility, and endurance, mindful consumption, and a disciplined practice to ‘review our actions’ with full consciousness before we take them. In the tradition of Hawaiian Huna, our actions either build positive or negative energy.  They promote positive speech, frequent contact with nature, gratitude and forgiveness, and harm to none with service to others.  When we’re uncertain it behooves us to ‘wait’, clear our thoughts and direct our request for clarity from the heart. 

My great curiosity deals with how we’re drawn to unite and separate.  Spiritual tradition and contemporary science have shown conclusively how we’re all connected.  Curious minds seek to explore common ground for deeper meaning.  This leads to increased sense of interconnection and peace.  Minds closed to drilling deeper focus upon persuasion to belief systems encased in fixed notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.  Curious minds drive from love and inter Being.  Minds dead to curiosity drive from fear and the pull to separate.

The courage to continually dig deeper is the core meaning of theological exploration and scientific discovery.  As soon as our curiosity diminishes with notions of an answer we somehow have diminished the vast expanse of the great mystery, the Divine.  We must examine what ‘faith’ means to us.  Are we carried through our day in courageous faith to the unknown, the mystery; or are we carried by a fixed belief system handed down from another who we’ve given authority over us? 

As a child in the 1950’s, I was raised in a culture putting strong emphasis on the correctness of parent, teacher, preacher, and government.  As a teen, a wonderful Lutheran college challenged me to go deeper in my curiosity about the Divine, a dishonest president moved us to always question authority, and my parents allowed a deeper dialog about our transformative times.  From 1968 to 1971 change was happening at an accelerated pace.  No matter how fixed people were to notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, it was almost impossible to kill curiosity about what was happening.  Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.  Racial tension was burning up our cities.  Vietnam was robbing us of our youth.  Our government was lying about our military purpose, killing our protestors, and moving more and more to a police state.  In 1968 Nixon won the election promoting the notion that he was looking out for the ‘non-dissenters’, the ‘non-questioners’, for those dead in their curiosity about what was going on.  Yet, in this period from 1968-1971, so many who voted for him began to ask questions.  As a twenty-one year old college student I experienced the burning of our college administration building and was blamed for the incident since we were near the building when it was set ablaze.  We worked a water brigade to put the fire out, but were still accused.  The questions were deep and the local community opened their doors.  They allowed their curiosity to awaken.  We allowed their questions, without need to change them.  True dialog happened and this was one of the richest moments of my American experience.

Brother David Steindl Rast has poignantly described the deep respect we owe to the words we speak.  He suggests that before we speak we examine what we really mean, that we only speak from first experience, and finally, that we ask the question, “So what?”  This abruptly takes us from the destructive position of ‘knowing’ and need to persuade.  We’re speaking strictly from our territory of experience, holding back on trying to impose our map on another.  This is what we did in 1971 when we entered homes.  We allowed others to speak their truth of direct experience and were then invited from their curiosity to speak ours.  We weren’t allowed to speak second and third hand information.  We were invited to dig deeper for common ground, eventually finding our unity in the human experience.

Curiosity, it’s perhaps life’s greatest gift and challenge.  When facing our dukka, our feeling of restlessness or ‘unsatisfactoriness’, we have the choice of drilling deeper, medicating and numbing ourselves, or stopping our curiosity with blind faith from another’s authority.  It seems the most precious ingredient to successful living, family, community, nation and planet is curiosity.  Curiosity about common sense and the common good seems to work best.  It’s an American right to be curious, to respectfully question authority.  We’re now seeing our very survival as a nation depends upon asking these deeper questions.  Whether as citizen, journalist, educator or theologian, without curiosity, with fixation on special interests and class, age, racial and religious division, we run a perilous journey similar to that of cancer cells within the body.  Curiosity, a deeper listening for deeper understanding, tolerance and patience, all driven from love and felt sense of unity…this is where healing comes from.

It’s early 2009 and I have that same felt sense of accelerating change.  We’ve smashed some barriers to the curious mind, electing a president of multi race background, seriously considering a woman for president, and accepting a senior candidate.  The world applauded America’s curiosity.  Perhaps the biggest challenge will be to challenge our capacity to religious tolerance and curiosity.  Our survival and success will depend upon our capacity to practice curiosity and willingness to peacefully step into the land of “I don’t know”.  When the curious mind is allowed to move to the uniting heart we move to a new dimension that acknowledges our interconnection.  When we can explore the fundamentalist mind, it’s willingness to execute violent acts in the name of ‘belief’, surrender our need to claim ‘correctness’, we just may find the courage to ask, “Is what we’re doing working?”  More importantly, we just may discover a larger stewardship to those who follow us as we ask, “Is what we’re doing working to create a more peaceful planet for our children, their children and the children to follow?”  Curiosity leads to broader questions, forever leading us to an appreciation in the ‘gift of the given’.  Curiosity and gratitude for what is open the door for more abundance.  Our fixed beliefs, a strong notion of ‘knowingness’, and our restlessness running amuck will lead to our demise.

Just Be It

Live long enough and you’ll observe the cyclical nature of everything.  We’re raised from a linear perspective, under the illusion there’s a beginning and ending.  We’re drawn to the allure of a fixed answer, a defined destination, a relief from the reality of constant change.  Yet, our modern scientific research and ancient spiritual wisdom clearly shows the bottomless depth of our search into the mystery.  A Catholic nun once put it geometrically into the following phrase: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.”  This captures the notion of harmonic alignment.  As a pebble falls into water, the ripple spreads infinitely.  As we experience the Divine, it no longer makes sense to intellectually conceive of God “out there” or “up there”.  There’s a “felt sense” of God that drives from the heart, a pull to the mystery of our interconnection.  In breaking third dimension theology notions of subject/object, of me here/God out there, we come more and more to see there’s only subject.

The experience of God everywhere, much like the circle, breaks all notions of us vs. them.  Rather than personifying an evil object out there, we come to accept the felt sense of stewarding thoughts, emotions and actions vs. destructive thoughts, emotions and actions.  In honoring the Divine which knows no boundaries, just as the circle has no sides, we come to a deeper experience of loving one another as ourselves.  Further, we carry a deeper sense of stewardship to all animate and inanimate gifts, all needing gentle care and acceptance as though feeding our very hearts.  In effect, we experience our brother as ourselves, our enemy as ourselves, the mountain as us, and the ocean as us, etc.  The illusion of separation is broken much like the illusion of a wave’s separate form is broken when it crashes on the shore. The wave may have just forgotten that it was always water.

The circle has no sides and continually asks us to drill deeper into the mystery.  The root of “communication” is “communion”.  As Christ ritualized in Holy Communion, we become one in the felt tasting of one another outside our addictions to fighting and difference.  As such, we find our curiosity may be what feeds us most in pursuing a deeper life.  Our practice would be a deeper listening, without judgment and fixed belief systems.  In effect, our deeper theology would always seek the deeper question rather than ending the learning process with a fixed answer.

Uncle Les, a kahuna living on Maui, once said he’d like to start a school with the name “No BS”.   The “BS” would designate “Belief Systems”.  The very root of theology, theos, designates a continuous drilling deeper into our understanding of the mystery, of the Divine.  Once we settle into a fixed belief system, thinking we have the answer, we create the opportunity for violence.  The famous linguist, Noam Chomsky, has said that violence is behind all our attempts to persuade or change others to what we think is “right”.  The famous artist, Robert Rauschenberg, was memorialized with the following statement that drove him to revolutionize modern art, saying, “There are so many more interesting ways to be than ‘right.”  In summarizing the key to the success of the infamous Motown Funk Brothers, Joe Messina said the key to their success was that “they listened to each other and liked each other”.  Albert Einstein, in The World as I See It, wrote the following:

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.

Einstein recognized the absurdity in stunting our growth with the dangerous words, “I know that”.  The entire format of debate, aimed to compete against another, to break another down for a judgment of who’s “right” pales to the more spiritual notion of dialogue, where we actively listen to one another until we get the felt sense of being in the other’s shoes.  Almost all military leaders finally come to this realization after years of service in fighting “evil doers” without first going deeper into understanding of their enemy.  The former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, realized this is the number one insight from all his years in public service when he released the Academy Award winning documentary The Fog of War.

Our head continually draws us to subject vs. object.  Our notions of “doing” and “having” feed the illusion that we are separate when our heart leads us to the harmonic, circular notion of “subject”, of the Divine, of our enemy as us, our surroundings as us, as Thich Knat Hahn labels our “inter Being”, as Paul Tillich labels the very “ground of Being”.  Rumi’s famous line, “Somewhere there’s a field beyond notions of right knowing and wrong knowing, let’s meet there”, captures the need to dig deeper, to explore the mystery further, to surrender our defense, and to forever honor the never ending nature of the circle and cycles of life.

Entering what seems to be an accelerating circle of change in 2009, may we forever honor the mystery?  Curiosity, wonder, and mystery….just ‘be’ it.

Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.” 

Robert Rauchenberg from NY Times obituary, May 14, 2008

….help us to calm our emotions and to see our “interbeing”—to see there is no separation between you and me, between you and any other person, to see that we all “inter-are.”  As my friend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “All life is interrelated.  We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, Creating True Peace

Best words to master in true inquiry from love.  “What do you want?”, followed by the loving willingness to stand in silence and love until a response is given.  The real work is in quieting our mind from solutions and judgment to prepare the ground for the other to honestly respond.

Best words to end a conversation and perhaps the most damaging words one can speak are, “I know that”.

Randy Johnson from an insight delivered June, 2006, after a marital dispute

The ultimate reason to create, teach, speak or write is to dissolve the veil of separation and reveal the intimate union of all existence…to awaken a recognition of ourselves as One with all that is.  Stacy Lawson blog,  http://www.staceylawson.com/blog.htm