CONTINUE...

COMMENT: 

Faults are bad friends.  I have watched two seagulls chasing a kestrel away from the safety of the shore. Seeing this, others join the chase to hunt it down into the water and drown it. Faults are like that. They are not worth defending or justifying. They are false friends and will attract more like them, which will drag you down until they drown you.

NEW PROJECT: MAKE A LIST OF YOUR VIRTUES!  Purify them. Consolidate them. Find new ones. They are real friends which will journey with you until the end. The real End. The end of suffering.

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...

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).

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.

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.

HEAL YOURSELF

COMMENT: 

U.S.A.  Seven hundred thousand doctors,  ten thousand hospitals,  a million nurses, one hundred and fifty thousand dentists, 56,000 chemists, 35,000 clinics, 8000 operations weekly, ten percent of children and adolescents suffering from serious emotional and mental disorders.

Signs of progressive medicine and civilisation? Actually, they demonstrate failure in medical systems and wrong guidance of the public in nutrition and life style. The 8000 operations performed weekly with brilliant technique indicate the failure of previous treatment. 

The medical profession has discovered no cure for cancer, diabetes, AIDS, psoriasis, arthritis, dementia or the common cold. But the pharmaceutical companies make vast amounts of money, selling their carefully packaged products for these conditions. They suppress the symptoms or the patients' awareness of them. They are full of claims, disclaimers and mention of undesirable side effects. In order to get on the shelf, they are tested for safety by a million-dollar industry which specialises in the breeding, mutilation and disposal (death) of animals in vivisection laboratories. Most of the research into the undesirable effects of tobacco was performed on rats. But who has ever seen a rat smoking?

We are educated to look outside ourselves for healing. Cats and dogs and wild animals don't have sex education or antenatal care but they breed pretty successfully. They rarely get sick, if left to themselves. If they do, they don't rush off to a doctor to find out the name of what it is they've got. They don't buy and ingest pills and liquids.  What do they do? They find somewhere quiet and lie down. They stop eating. They drink when they are thirsty. They may go off and sniff and taste plants in their immediate vicinity (but they don't try to find out their names). Mostly, they just lie down until they feel better. Or they die comfortably. That is, unless they have an "owner" who decides to "put them to sleep" (kill them).

"Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

"The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment."

Why cannot you therefore HEAL YOURSELF. Maybe you can! Why not try? Start by looking in rather than out.

NEW PROJECT: 
THE LONGER THE JOURNEY, THE MORE BAGGAGE YOU NEED TO TAKE.
THE MORE BAGGAGE YOU CHOOSE TO TAKE, THE LONGER THE JOURNEY.

TRUTH CANNOT BE AN ADD-ON FOR THE EGO

If you adjust the Truth to suit yourself, you veer away from the Truth. 

Compare the fabulous wealth of the Vatican with Jesus' invitation,

"If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."  

If you adjust yourself to fit the Truth, you become perfect and perfectly happy.

NEW PROJECT: HEAL YOURSELF

NOT WANTING

All conflicts between individuals or groups stem from conflicting wants. All our problems at bottom come from wanting. Even one kind of not wanting is actually negative wanting.

Consider: I don't want a cat (but if that one stays, I don't object) and

                   I don't want a cat (and if you don't get rid of it I'll call the vet!).

All our problems come from wanting: If we don't get what we want, we are, at the least, dissatisfied. If we do get what we want, we are satisfied for a while but then we want more of it or we want something else. Wanting is never satisfied. The only cure is to be free of wanting.

But how?

There are two ways:

1. Put your mind on something else. You can't want something you are not conscious of because wanting is always accompanied by consciousness. But if the want is very strong, you may not have the will power and concentration to do this.

2. Look to see if it is actually desirable. All wanting depends on seeing that something is desirable. If you can see that actually it isn't, the wanting will evaporate.

Consider a small boy looking at a bowl of fruit. The more he looks, the more saliva and impatience is generated. (How can he get at it without being caught?) But if he were to sink his teeth into the most luscious looking and discover that it's made of wax, you couldn't force him to have another bite. (Unless he likes wax fruit).

NEW PROJECT: TRUTH CANNOT BE AN ADD-ON FOR THE EGO!