Thursday 26 April 2012

WRITE A LIST OF YOUR FAULTS


METHOD: Make a list of your faults. Every time one occurs, put an "X" next to it. At the end of a day (week) you can see by the position and number of the "X"s, which are the most persistent faults. 

If you remove the feeling or emotion from them, they appear just as mistakes. A mistake is something that causes unwanted results: wrong directions taken; accidents, miscommunication, ill health to mind or body etc. Seeing them without emotion is objective seeing. It removes the resistance to overcoming them. 

The mind is like a computer (or more accurately a computer is like the mind). If you make a list and decide (program the mind) to do without them, you discover that every time you repeat a fault (or are about to do so) the mind will immediately remind you. If you respond positively to this reminder, the fault will disappear. If you delay, the reminder will disappear and you should note an extra fault "prevarication". 

Generally with this project, you get the eye for a fault and can continually unearth ones you have overlooked. This is especially true if you can drain the feeling/emotion out of them. It's a lot of fun (and of course profitable). 


CONTINUE...


Monday 16 April 2012

KNOW THYSELF

COMMENT: 

Know Thyself is not the same as Be Yourself, until the rubbish has been cleared out. Nowadays it is fashionable to say, "Don't try to be perfect. Be comfortable with yourself as you are!"
The lazy and those who have given up welcome this as an excuse for their (mis)behaviour.

One might as well say, "Don't try to make your bedroom spotless. Be comfortable with the mess and rubbish as it is." Who made the mess? Who made you the imperfect being that you are?

Better advice would be, "Spot your faults. Don't ignore them. Don't defend them. Get rid of them."



NEW PROJECT: WRITE A LIST OF YOUR FAULTS. See how many you can cross out in a week. (And how many new ones you discover).

Monday 9 April 2012

THE FOX KNOWS MANY THINGS. THE HEDGEHOG KNOWS ONE BIG THING.

COMMENT:

All the things the fox knows are outward-facing: hunting, sniffing, mapping, deceiving, avoiding, running. The biggest thing he knows is to run to his "earth" when he can no longer avoid his hunters.

He made his spurt for the Mourne End rocks.
The air blew rank with the taint of fox;
The yews gave way to a greener space
Of great stones strewn in a grassy place.
And there was his earth at the great grey shoulder,
Sunk in the ground, of a granite boulder.
A dry, deep burrow with a rocky roof,
Proof against crowbars, terrier-proof,
Life to the dying, rest for bones.

But, when he gets there,

The earth was stopped; it was filled with stones.
Then, for a moment, his courage failed,
His eyes looked up as his body quailed,
Then the coming of death, which all things dread,
Made him run for the wood ahead.

The fox's biggest thing is not big enough! The hedgehog's is bigger.

The hedgehog escapes away from the world. He rolls up into himself. Even the fox cannot follow him past his spikes.  But the leather-covered hands of man can reach him. Lift him. Drop him in boiling water and eat him.

The hedgehog's biggest thing is not big enough.


NEW PROJECT: KNOW THYSELF.


Monday 2 April 2012

THE LONGER THE JOURNEY...


Certainly we may be carrying suitcases and bricks. But most of the baggage is in the lumber room of our minds; regrets and might-have-beens from the past; anticipations, worries and fears about the future; and the entanglements of our present lives; relationships, mortgages, bank balance, our decaying bodies. Like jugglers, we wrestle with what is already in flight:

The Juggler throws
 his batons at the sun.
The sky throws them back again
 like rain,
 each and every one.

 Surely by now he knows
 what it is he’s gaining?

 Come Mr. Juggler,     
       look at it from your point of view,
     
       just how long has it been raining?


       On you?
yet cannot resist picking up more. His penance will continue until - Journey's End

         when all  batons
         lie still upon the ground
         and of the Juggler
         no residue is found.



NEW PROJECT: THE FOX KNOWS MANY THINGS. THE HEDGEHOG KNOWS ONE BIG THING.