Like all repressed memories, repressed wildness continues to haunt our “civilized” lives. As these energies accumulate, they may eventually produce wild, irrational, and often violently destructive mental processes or behavior. This destructiveness may be turned inward on ourselves in masochism, irrational (perhaps psychotic ideation, or potentially suicidal depression. Or the repressed wild energies may be directed outward at civilized society, at those perceived as wild energies may be directed outward at civilized society, at those perceived as wild or simply different, or directed at wilderness preservation. If we get to know and befriend this wild side of our mind-body-spirit organism and integrate it into our overall self-identity, this wasted repressed energy becomes available for playfulness, adventure, constructive relating and creativity in all areas of our lives. (From the book Ecotherapy by Howard Clinebell. page 30)

“I think there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, say, to life itself than this incessant business…. If a man should walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.” (Thoreau)..
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The contradiction between wanting rapid economic growth and dynamic economic change and at the same time wanting family values, community values, and stability is a contradiction so huge that it can only last because of an aggressive refusal to think about it.
(From the book AFFLUENZA (by John de Graaf), p. 132 & 50)

Perhaps the saddest aspect of this imperative to consume in the West is that we’re asked to accept a piece of certifiable rubbish: more satisfaction is ultimately to be found in a product – a style of trouser, a personally tailored system of electronic communication, an exercise regimen, a career – than in another human being. We will be happier with a young, handsome stranger in Barbados for a week, it is implied, than in the company of someone we love and who loves us and to whom we feel responsible and obligated.

To an outsider, we would appear to be a race of people grown inept at human expression making love, fixing dinner for someone, presenting an idea – without devices or accouterments to focus and enhance our meaning. To an outsider, it might also appear that, psychologically if not actually, many of us live in isolation; and that separated from a continuous stream of stimulation derived from our purchases we become anxious.

What way is there out of this morass? (more…)

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”

— Lao Tzu

How do we take something away? As we cultivate higher awareness, we begin to see just how much we have added things that really aren’t there to our picture of reality. Our beliefs, concepts and emotions all add layers of meaning to physical reality, but that meaning exists for us only – it has no objective existence. For example, the word ‘mother’ has a complicated network of meaning for each of us.

Become aware of how your beliefs and emotions colour your perception of different events in your life. See if you can begin to step out of your fabrications to experience the truth and spaciousness of what is.

“When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. . Forgive yourself and move on.”

Bernie S. Siegel
(The Daily Guru, 11/28/05)

Remember that hatred is a reaction to frustrated love.

The hatred you see directed outward toward you is actually pain being exposed by the person who is experiencing it. When the hate is dissolved the pain loses its horror and torment.

You need not be anyone’s victim. One of the most loving things you can do in response to hate is to silently send that person a blessing and remove yourself from the energy field of fear and hatred. (more…)

When I’m listening to you, it’s infinitely more important for me to listen to me than to listen to you. Of course, it’s important to listen to you, but it’s more important that I listen to me. Otherwise I won’t be hearing you. Or I’ll be distorting everything you say. I’ll be coming at you from my own conditioning. I’ll be reacting to you in all kinds of ways from my insecurities, from my need to manipulate you, from my desire to succeed, from irritations and feelings that I might not be aware of. So it’s frightfully important that I listen to me when I’m listening to you. That’s what awareness is.
Unfortunately, all the emphasis is concentrated on changing the world and very little emphasis is given to waking up. When you wake up, you will know what to do or what not to do. (From the book Awareness (by Antohony DeMello), p 71)

Our very desire for self-improvement has sharpened severely our sense of criticism, and it now stands in the way of the very improvement we want for ourselves and for others. It is time we broaden our outlook, and make accptance, instead of criticim, the basis of our behaviour with others… and with ourselves.

Acceptance is not inertia, it is joyful recognition of all that is, in order to (more…)

We should be clear about what happens when we destroy the living forms of this planet. The first consequence is that we destroy modes of divine presence. If we have a wonderful sense of the divine, it is because we live amid such awesome magnificence. If we have refinement of emotion and sensitivity, it is because of the delicacy, the fragrance, and indescribable beauty of song and music and rhythmic movement in the world about us. If we grow in our life vigor, (more…)

The great Gensha once invited a court official to tea. After customary greetings, the official said, “I do not wish to squander this opportunity of spending some time in the presence of so great a Master. Tell me, what does it mean when they say that in spite of our having it in our daily life we do not see it?”

Gensha offered the man a piece of cake. Then he served him his tea. After eating and drinking, the official, (more…)

Countless teenagers cope with this deadly awareness, as do some of their elders, with denial. They go on with business as usual, numbing their awareness by all manner of escapes and addictions. But, their vain attempts to escape into this self-protective womb of denial does not really protect them from the spiritual virus that psychiatrist Robert Lifton calls radical futurelessness. Young persons without a deep, reality-based feeling that they have along-range healthy future are infected with futurelessness and in attending hopelessness….

For civilization as a whole, the faith that is so essential to restore the balance (more…)