I know a little three-letter word that is truly big: big. Cities are nicknamed using it: the Big Easy — New Orleans; Big Apple — NYC. Major world cities using the name makes it big. Do you know where we missed the boat on using the little word? The Big Happy — it’s a place waiting to be discovered, just like you can discover and explore the Big Apple or Big Easy. Most of us want to be happy, but the problem is that we let little things take the place of the Big Happy. How would you enjoy some obscure little town where they have a local volunteer theater group compared to going to a Broadway production of The Lion King? Not much comparison, but some people would feel like a play’s a play and they would see the local production of Miss Shirley’s Blueberry Pie and be satisfied that they saw live theater. Now, nothing’s wrong with that in and of itself, but you would be kidding yourself if you think that one of those is not Big compared to the other. So, we think we will be happy with little things: a new job, lover, house, car, city, boat… . Doesn’t matter what, but they are not the Big Happy. Who are you at your heart core, and what is your purpose, i.e., what will you do with your life to express who you are? Answer those, and you have arrived at the Big Happy. We often settle for those little happies; they mask the challenge and are the easy way out of discovering purpose. Want an example? Ulysses, Odysseus, in Tennyson’s famous poem “Ulysses,” decides after he has been back on his throne for three years — after being away for twenty years — that he needs to leave Ithaca. Why? He knew little happies were not good enough: king, beautiful wife, wealthy, respected, a legend. His Big Happy, though, his heart, was Explorer. Even though old, his “gray spirit yearn[ed] in desire / To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” What so many others equated with success was killing him: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” Ego, friends, and family had rationalized that he deserved these good things, he deserved honor, he deserved ease, but he was rusting. Old age meant nothing to him in pursuing his passion and purpose, yet it took him three years to realize it. He had taken the easy, unchallenged, logical life. And so do many of us. Have you arrived at that place of purpose that can’t be denied by all the possible little happies? The Big Happy can’t be reasoned away by others, can’t be reasoned away by the ego, can’t be denied without soul distress, and won’t decline in intent with age. Unless you have deceived yourself, you will know restlessness of soul and heart until you arrive at the Big Happy. Get there, please. You will find others there, just like Ulysses had a crew going with him, those with whom he “toil’d, and wrought, and thought.” The Big Happy is a place of enthusiasm, joy, hard work, challenge, and infinite reward — for life.
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I love words, a true logophile. Sometimes, looking at specific words can yield some powerful thoughts. Witness these words: inspiration and enthusiasm. Inspiration means “to breathe in.” When we get inspired, we have encountered some influence from somewhere that we decide to breathe in. Our hearts tell the ego to stop holding our breath and suck in some significant something — a novel, poem, film, natural scene, music, meaningful act of someone. Enthusiasm — now there’s a great word: “in + god (en + theos).” Some supernatural power excites us to the point of obsessive drive because our hearts will settle for nothing less. Inspiration produces enthusiasm, a life-changing force — if we know ourselves, listen to our hearts, and allow inspiration to be sucked all the way into our heart’s core. Enthusiasm drives us to work our daily mission, which transforms our passion into reality. Enthusiasm drives sustainable action. It is the fuel for our heart’s vision, at least part of our life purpose. True enthusiasm, rather than simply a passing excitement, yields innovation and creativity, because true enthusiasm must find a way to be expressed. Enthusiasm, then, is not external to us. It becomes part of our makeup; our heart digests it and nourishes us with it. Over the years, I have found that I cannot commit to any course of action unless I am enthusiastic about it. I have always sensed that whatever I am doing has to come from my heart. I was enthusiastic about my work in construction, with antiques, in education, and now as a writer. I knew, somewhere, somehow, that my deepest self was working in my life when I was operating with enthusiasm. Even though I felt like that, it took one extra wind of inspiration for me to realize what I had been headed toward and working in through my life: Discovery. That’s what drove me. I loved discovering ways to do things differently, better, faster, more excellently —really, discovering anything. Just discovering! That golden breath of inspiration came from Paolo Coelho and his novel, The Fifth Mountain. The protagonists learn that they have a new name, one single name that defines them. I realized that I am Discovery. I’m all about discovering me, Self, and helping others to discover. I inspired, breathed in, that concept. However, Coelho had to breathe it out; he had to expire it. We usually use expire to mean that someone has died, and in a way when someone shares part of their life purpose with us, breathes it out to us, a little bit of them dies. When it comes from core Self, though, it comes from spirit, and spirit is infinite — so no worries! I love the organic whole of this life: when we know Self, we share that self with enthusiasm, which inspires someone which gets transformed by their hearts into their own enthusiasm — and they are off and expiring, breathing out to others, to continue the circle. Connection, creativity, joy, significance, fulfillment, perseverance — oh, so much comes from true enthusiasm. A few questions that might help you discover!
Friendship: in some ways, the definition is very subjective, isn’t it? One group who I hold in my heart as friends are my former students. Life and geography have in some ways separated us, but the times we spent together were genuine experiences of friendship. I know many of my students felt the same; I have the notes to prove it, along with my memories. I remember distinctly how I worked to develop such a close relationship with my students. My first two years of teaching, my more seasoned colleagues made sure they shared their “wisdom” with me because of my alarming behavior of smiling and being friendly with students. The conventional wisdom? “Don’t smile before Thanksgiving.” (They meant it!) I was told that I would lose control, blah, blah, blah. They were colleagues, but not all of them were friends. I developed an attitude and response that is summed up like this: If I spend six hours a day with someone, and I learn, laugh, and sometimes cry with them, I’d be crazy if I didn’t consider them my friends. I made friendship a priority, because without it students would not come to realize the two objectives that I wanted, educationally: I wanted them to learn how to learn and to learn to love to learn. Now, these goals weren’t manipulation; they were good things that I wanted my friends to have. I accepted them as friends, and they reciprocated. I did not expect unquestioned and inflexible silence. Of course, sometimes we needed respectful quiet. I also wanted my students to grow as learners and as young adults, to expand their dreams, their viewpoints, their abilities to analyze, synthesize, think, and create beyond the classroom. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, said, “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” I like that definition by negation, saying what friendship isn’t. That leaves the definition of friendship in this way to mean someone with whom we want interaction — no silence — and someone who urges and encourages us to grow. I want my readers to grow. (Slight caution here: Encouraging friends to grow does not equate to making them think the same way you do.) I would love to interact with you more. I write because I consider, at least as a starting proposition, that you are my friends. To paraphrase part of my novel, The Fellowship of the Heart, I think we are absolutely right to have a positive attitude towards others in general. There is just no percentage in thinking negatively; it drains too much energy and attracts negative energy in return. We need to accept one another as friends. 1. How do you define friendship? (I know where it has been invaluable in my life, especially as a teacher.) 2. When and where has it been important to you? 3. Why do we desire friendship as we do? “All seems beautiful to me” (Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road” Section 5). And so you are to me, at least when I’m functioning in the spirit of the heart and not of the ego. I have written much of the ego and the heart over the last few months. Why? The ego tries to insulate our core Self, but we are creatures of infinite love who deeply desired to be connected to others, to this natural world, to the Universe itself because infinity dwells in us. We embody infinite love. Not everyone thinks about this or feels this. What causes anyone to shun acknowledging infinite love as being their essential composition? Ego — which is why I have referred to it so much. And in Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” so does he. Oh, he doesn’t use the word ego, but it is clearly there, as is the concept of walking in the reality of an intimate knowledge of his heart, which puts him in touch with himself and infinite love. Where does this occur in the poem? I will share a few places that show we can accept and connect with one another; we can share in infinite love wherever and whenever we are. “I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go, / I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them, / I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return” (1). All are accepted, embraced. How do you and I measure up to that concept? Do we accept and embrace others for who and what they are? That does not mean we condone or even agree with all that makes up others, but it means we understand and value and love one another. Ego would put up walls and limits to that, but the poet says (yes, English teachers, I know it’s the narrator), “From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of all limits and imaginary lines” (5). He recognizes that those to whom he feels closest may well be walking within the self-imposed constructs of the ego. At one point, he almost orders his fellow travelers on the road to leave those ego walls behind: “Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!/ It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it. … Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes…speaking of anything else but never itself.” Oh, how good are we at speaking of everything else but our true self? I would accept you. Will you accept me? Will you accept one another? Yes, I will be idealistic for myself, but I wish it for you, because I want you to realize “None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me” (2). You may think I’m odd, and that is okay because “Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me, / Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me” (5). Why have I written this? “Here is realization, / Here is a man tallied — he realizes here what he has in him, / The past, the future, majesty, love…” (6). You say you have all sorts of troubles? Here is what you need to know: your soul is eternal; you are beautiful and dignified; you are love. The only solution to all the sucky crap going on in the world and with us personally can’t be fixed by government, education, money, or anything else BEFORE we come to this self-awareness. “All seems beautiful to me.” Each of you. Yesterday, I wrote about the beauty of resonance with other people, places, and things. However, at one point I thought what about people that we just seem to clash with, those with whom we experience disharmony and dissonance? How we respond to those folks can be a character and heart-building experience — or more. What do we do? I begin with caring about my own soul because I love core Self. That must be a priority. That is the prerequisite for the expression of love to all else. When we do come across those who clash with our frequency, we have three choices according to Eckhart Tolle: “So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it.” I have increasingly decided to choose the last alternative when dealing with people: accept it. Accept that I need to be with them, speak to them, or interact with them in some way; changing them is not an objective. All ego opposition just melts with that spirit of acceptance. However, that does not mean accepting their words, judgments, decisions, or actions. It means accepting that you are going to deal with this person. When you do that, you are free to express your core Self because you have given up the ego struggle of trying to avoid another and insulate yourself. Choose the heart response of expressing yourself, and then, show that. I have a neighbor who I and many others in the ‘hood avoided as much as possible. I saw the guy almost every day, so a few years ago I thought accept it. Next time I saw him, I engaged him in what was for him an unexpected conversation, even though he came out holding a plastic bag of dog poop that he was insinuating my dogs had left on his lawn. I pulled out my pocket full of empty poop bags, held up the one that I had already used, and just started talking about how good my puppies are and how I take care of them. I’m neither genius nor psychic; what happened next was not planned. I talked about my dogs, so I thought Ask him something. Now, he is a gruff guy, but when I asked about his family tears came to his eyes. “The wife died three months ago.” Tears welled up in my eyes, too. We are still discordant, but by accepting that I would speak with him even in the face of censure, I at least have quieted his judgmental thoughts towards me and the pups. That’s what discordant notes do — quiet or cancel one another. Now, whenever I speak to him, I express my heart instead of avoiding him. Not long ago, he brought out bones for the dogs when we were walking past, so who knows? It doesn’t always work out well, but whenever I present my heart and not my ego, I feel better. It sucks to feel and say negative things about others; I know because I still do it sometimes. There are definitely times to leave situations, and there are definitely wonderful, positive times to change things. On a daily basis, though, when I encounter discord, I have learned that accepting builds me up. That doesn’t mean resignation to changing your vibrational match to try and resonate with someone else or get them to harmonize with you. It means accept that you will interact and express your true self. It will either change their vibration or quiet them. And we can move Onward and Upward! |
Questions to consider:How many times have you asked yourself or simply thought about the following questions?
Who am I, really? What is my truth? How do my actions reveal what I really feel and believe? What would I do with my life if I could do anything? What is my passion? Why am I here? How can I discover answers to any of these questions? If you have considered any of these questions, I hope that my experiences and writing will give you some guidance. Please read my blog and comment and share your thoughts. I would love to hear from you! Archives
December 2019
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