Beyond the obvious

Better To Have Lived in Truth

/ James Browning

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There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind – graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last – and yet will remain with you for life.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another. Jim Butcher

I regret the times I damned my pain or prayed for it to be gone. At that moment I did not realize I was being sculpted by discomfort into a better and wiser man. In hindsight that sort of growth reminds me of being an adolescent boy when I woke with my legs hurting so much from growing overnight that they could barely support me. But once I walked for a few minutes, the aches subsided quickly. I was simply growing.

And so I have gratefully begun to better accept the outcome of pain, although the bearing of it will never be something positively anticipated. It is through allowing grief, sorry and anguish to do their work that I become wiser and through that  wisdom, grow more content.

We never know when our last day on earth will be.
So, love with full sincerity, believe with true faith,
and hope with all of your might.
Better to have lived in truth and discovered life,
than to have lived half heartedly
and died long before you ever ceased breathing.
Cristina Marrero

A Happiness Weapon

/ James Browning

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In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s an engrained habit of mine to prefer being the one who drives. I get bored easily on the passenger side. But that changed last weekend. Giving up control has never been more fun.

Someone one else was driving and the day was a stellar fall Saturday afternoon; cool but not cold with beautiful sunny skies. Windows were down and the breeze through the moving car window was strong, but felt good. It had been many, many years since I had last done what came next.

Long had I forgotten the pleasure of flying my hand like an airplane out an open car window. If I tipped my finders up, my hand would fly upwards. Moving them down made my hand dive. To one side or the other caused movement in that direction.

The speed the pickup was moving was fast enough that the air whipping past the vehicle could almost completely support my hand. It was a wonderful near-weightless feeling I enjoyed while flying my “hand-plane” down the road.

I lost myself in the moment, paid little attention to the scenery and barely heard the driver’s voice when she asked, “Are you having fun?”. I replied “Lots” and went right back to enjoying my regression to the wonders of childhood for the next five miles.

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air – explode softly – and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth – boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either – not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. Robert Fulghum

Call me childish if you want. I’ll take it as a compliment. This weekend I am going to buy a coloring book, a big box of crayons and a box to keep them in. On the days I feel depressed or down, when life is heavy, at times when a tough decision is weighing me down or a dose of feel-good fun is needed I will pull out my little therapy box and ‘color’. In those moments the good times of childhood will be let lose within to bring me back to what life is for: TO BE ENJOYED. I will be a thousand times better when the little boy is laughing within me again, having fun and centered in ‘now’. I am grateful he is alive within me.

Happy is he who still loves something
he loved in the nursery.
He has not been broken in two by time;
he is not two men, but one,
and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
G.K. Chesterton

Just Go For It

/ James Browning

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There will be a few times in your life

when all your instincts will tell you to do something,

something that defies logic,

upsets your plans,

and may seem crazy to others.

When that happens,

you do it.

Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else.

Ignore logic,

ignore the odds,

ignore the complications,

and just go for it.

From “Remember When” Judith McNaught

And so it is with me as Judith McNaught wrote. The more I have become able to listen to the soften spoken voice of my heart and soul (or whatever you call that presence that lives in my chest and gut) the better my life has become. It’s damn scary to take off in a direction that a good bit of me is uncertain about while at the same time knowing at an instinctive level it is absolutely the direction I must go.

My destiny is not something I can always decide on or choose, but I can let it happen if I stop paddling against the current and let it take me where I am meant to go. I am not saying I don’t have to think and use my head. I do, but when logic has been thoughtfully laid out in my head I allow my ‘heart and soul” to lay over it. When the two match, “no problem”. When they don’t, more often than not, my logic is flawed. It’s then I need to do one of two things: 1) rethink the subject and stir in my heart and soul to see what surfaces or 2) simply follow my heart and soul. The latter has rarely ever been a mistake.

How utterly freeing it is to live life knowing I don’t have to figure every thing out! II am grateful for the mystery and excitement that living this way lends to my life.

Remembering you are going to die
is the best way I know to avoid the trap
of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Anonymous

Being Whole

/ James Browning

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Reflecting back there was never a time where I actually hated myself. There have been frequent times I have hated something I did and held myself overly responsible for a long time. It was from a collection of such things that I ended up with a very mediocre view of myself. That came from including credit for the good but neutralizing it with my negative deeds.

Giving myself credit for the good I have done is important to have a decent self-image, but such things should be kept far away from those I perceive as bad. Each is a far different thing and has little to do with the other. Good does not cancel bad any more that the reverse is true.

In photography a “gray card” is used to take light readings as it represents the colors of the average scene all melted down into one color. This medium “gray” does not attract the eye and is boring and plain. Life is not best lived like that. I should not try to stir all my good and bad together. Rather like a bold painting that has dark grungy areas and bright beautiful colors is how I should view my life.

In my view the opposite of being bad is not “being good”, but being whole; wholly human and a unique combination of dark and light. I am grateful to grasp that point and be able to use it to slow myself down when I start weighing out my ‘goods’ and ‘bads’.

There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it hardly becomes any of us to talk
about the rest of us.
G.E. Cooke

Casting Shadows

/ James Browning

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It’s difficult not to be critical when I see someone misbehaving, treating others badly or acting like they are the only one that matters. It has become my practice to try to replace being condemning with a thought like, “you don’t know what this person has gone through to get to here or how hard their life is. Just say a silent quick prayer for them and move on”.

To judge others is to bring judgement to myself. The more I am critical about people the more I train myself to be hard on me! My discovery with intentionally trying not to judge others is I have become less critical of me. It has become apparent that the same disapproving part of me used to condemn others is the same part that can be hyper-critical about myself. That way of seeing was in fact polishing a mirror I used to judge myself.

If we knew the cards and crosses
Crowding ’round our neighbor’s way,
If we knew his little losses,
Sorely grievous day by day,
Would we then so often chide him
For his lack of thrift and gain?
Casting on his life a shadow
Leaves on his heart a stain?

If we knew the silent story
Quivering through some hearts of pain,
Would our human hearts dare doom them
Back to haunts of guilt again?
Life has many a tangled crossing,
Joy has man a change to woe;
And the cheeks tear-washed are whitest,
As the blessed angels know.

Let us reach into our hearts,
For the key to others’ lives,
And with love to erring nature,
Cherish good that still survives;
So that when our disrobed spirits
Soar to realms of light again,
We may say, dear Father, judge us
As we judged our fellow-men.
unknown

I am far from perfect and find myself judging and casting shadows on others more often than I wish. But I am grateful more often than not I catch myself. I redirect my thinking realizing that every time I condemn someone else, I am in fact setting me up judge myself.

Judgement prevent us from seeing
the good that lies beyond appearances.
Wayne Dyer

Become the Watcher

/ James Browning

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When I become aware of my thoughts, it does not make me become my thoughts. Quite the contrary, only then do I have a chance to sort out what’s real from what’s misapprehension, distortion and nonsense. Without attention most thought bounces mindlessly in my brain like light reflected back and forth between a hundred mirrors; lots of motion but getting nowhere.

The musing of my mind is most often barely me at all and instead some creation loosely based on a combination of all I have been through, felt or experienced. This kind of thinking is created like a mindless chemical reaction. When I pay attention to what is bouncing around in my head I become the watcher who is able, with good reliability, to sort out the good stuff from the ravings of a lunatic (which is exactly what the thoughts of an unattended mind are!).

A frantic mind misses opportunities and pushes them away. If a good opportunity comes your way, and your mind is going a mile a minute, that opportunity will wiz right by you.

When opportunities come, you need a quiet place for them to alight, to rest. A frantic mind actually pushes them away. Multi-tasking creates more stress and makes the mind more frantic. Do one thing at a time and complete it.

It is the nature of the mind to have thoughts. We mistakenly identify with our thoughts and think that’s who we are. But to the mind, all thoughts are the same. The thoughts that make our ego feel good, we pull towards us, and the ones that make our ego feel bad, we push away. This push and pull is what makes the mind frantic.

Truth comes through the mind, not from the mind. The mind is the vehicle for truth, not the source. The source of truth is the universe, spirit, God, whatever you want to call consciousness. Chandra Alexander

When beginning a meditation practice about a decade ago, my mind wrestled with me. It did not want to be closely examined and fought back by increasing the stream of silent babbling within my brain. Only for a few seconds could I redirect my thinking before the ‘bully’ that was my mind took over again. The majority of the time my unconscious thoughts still win, but over time I have found moments of peace while sitting still with my eyes closed and allowing myself to just be.

The key lesson learned has been once I started paying attention to my thoughts and attempting to sort out what is fact from fiction; what is reality from complete lunacy; an amazing thing happened. Gratefully I began to be able to sort out with decent consistency what was my own BS and what was truth.

The rational man doesn’t hate it
when he is proven wrong;
he is actually grateful,
since his knowledge
has been enriched.
Unknown

We All Have Twenty-Four Hour Days

/ James Browning

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You can do anything,
but you can’t do everything.
David Allen

What has my attention at this moment? My thoughts are directed at words surfacing in my mind and typing them with a considerably lesser amount of awareness of music playing on Pandora. I’m vaguely aware of the surroundings of my home office, the art and posters on the wall and the noise of an occasional neighborhood car that drives by. That’s all my mind can take on at the moment.

People have a fixed amount that must be allocated according to need. To use a popular analogy, attention is like a bucket of water. People draw upon it as needed, but every dipper full and every teaspoon full leaves less for other purposes. Marc Green

Two interesting components have arisen with the increase of discretionary time I now have: 1) my perception of the world outside me has increased. I notice more, see things more deeply and generally feel good because of it. 2) With a richness of time, it is easy to let hours and days slip by with little to show for them. Some of that is good. Some of it is not so positive.

Zig Ziglar said, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” My conclusion is that expecting myself to settle into new routines within my first 60 days of semi-retirement was too much to ask. Already I feel better letting myself off the hook of that unrealistic expectation.

…the allocation of attention is largely automatic and occurs without awareness. As a result, it is not easily brought under conscious control. You may direct someone’s attention by saying “watch the step,” and temporarily cause a conscious allocation of attention to the step. However, there is a good chance that within a few minutes or even seconds, the memory trace will disappear and the next time the person will fail to notice the step. The same automatic factors that directed attention away from the step in the first instance have not changed. Marc Green

The paragraph from Marc Green helps me a good deal because it tells me that keeping a keen awareness of my desire to form new routines is a great start to having them. All I have to do is follow through on what I have concluded and stay aware with a sense of priority. Then new routines will simply fall into place. Whew. I am grateful to “get off my own case”.

I didn’t pay attention to time or distance,
instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion,
knowing it wasn’t about the finish line
but how I got there that mattered.
Sarah Dessen

An Illumination of Words

/ James Browning

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There’s a young author whose work I have come to enjoy and admire. C. Joybell C. may be youthful in years but on a spiritual level she strikes me as a “wise old soul’. Her writing covers a myriad of topics, but centers on life and love more than anything else.

The two paragraphs just below were selected because I have a heart that has been broken many times. Some times a woman hurt me. At others I did things that ended up hurting me. A broken heart feels the same no matter who the villain is.

I have met so many heartbroken men. It’s a catastrophe. Women are easily overcome by the process that happens when a boy falls in love and becomes a man. Men’s hearts are so often broken. Still, you have to leave your broken heart in a place where… when the woman who knows how to see what a gift is, sees it… your broken heart can be picked up again. I think that it takes a very strong woman (inner strength) to be able to handle a man falling in love with her, without morphing into a monster (the process is a very potent process, it can poison a woman, really).

A woman thinks she wants a man to fall in love with her for all the perks that come with it; but when a real love really does happen, when a real man shows his manhood; it’s often too powerful a thing to endure without being poisoned. Hence, all the heartbroken men. But, I do believe that there are strong women in the world today. A few. But there are. You could say, that the mark of a real woman, is a woman who can handle a man… a man falling in love with her. A woman who can recognize that, and keep it with her. C. Joybell C.

Too much life energy gets spent on trying to sort out where I’m headed. More and more I am learning to just sit back and enjoy the flight.

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you. C. Joybell C.

“All Things Lit Like Fireflies: An Illumination of Words” is C. Joybell C.’s new book and I am looking forward to getting a copy soon. She has a special way of expressing feelings that speaks strongly to me. Thanks ‘My Lady’… I am grateful for you and your work! http://cjoybellc.com/

I think that we are like stars.
Something happens to burst us open;
but when we burst open and think we are dying;
we’re actually turning into a supernova. A
nd then when we look at ourselves again,
we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful
than we ever were before!
C. JoyBell C.

Mother and Father of Love

/ James Browning

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In 1987, a 74-year old rickshaw puller by the name of Bai Fangli came back to his hometown planning to retire from his backbreaking job. There, he saw children working in the fields, because they were too poor to afford school fees.

Bai returned to Tianjin and went back to work as a rickshaw puller, taking a modest accommodation next to the railway station. He waited for clients 24 hours a day, ate simple food and wore discarded second-hand clothes he found. He gave all of his hard-earned earnings to support children who could not afford education.

In 2001, he drove his rickshaw to Tianjin YaoHua Middle School, to deliver his last installment of money. Nearly 90 years old, he told the students that he couldn’t work any more. All of the students and teachers were moved to tears.

In total, Bai had donated a total of 350,000 yuan to help more than 300 poor students continue with their studies. In 2005, Bai passed away leaving behind an inspiring legacy.

If a rickshaw-puller who wore used clothes and had no education can support 300 children to go to school, imagine what you and I can do with the resources we have to bring about positive change in our world!

It is beyond my wildest dream to be as giving as Bai Fangli. It is humbling to realize in comparison I am selfish. But I can become more giving and with inconsistent starts and stops I see myself becomes more so.

Practice giving things away, not just things you don’t care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don’t bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. Robert Thurman

Once upon a time there was a little boy who grew up to be an introverted, inwardly troubled and unsettled man. Over time, life and intention taught him peace, openness and a sense of self that could only be learned through much heartache, grief and challenge. That man is deeply grateful and lives today with a sense of happiness beyond any he dared once imagine. I am grateful to know about him. I am that man.

Gratitude is the creative force,
the mother and father of love.
It is in gratitude that real love exists.
Love expands only when gratitude is there.
Limited love does not offer gratitude.
Limited love is immediately bound by something,
by constant desires or constant demands.
But when it is unlimited love, constant love,
then gratitude comes to the fore.
This love becomes all gratitude.
Sri Chinmoy

The “Just War Theory”

/ James Browning

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On a semi-regular basis I attend a local Unitarian church and always benefit from each visit. This morning the minister talked about a concept I had not heard of called “Jus Ad Bellum” which in Latin translates to “The Law to War Theory”. Some refer to it as “The Just War Theory”.

At a time my country is considering making war in another country (again) I hope many will go through the seven criteria for a “Just War” and come to their own conclusion concerning possible new military action in the Middle East.

Just Cause: The reason for going to war needs to be just and cannot therefore be solely for recapturing things taken or punishing people who have done wrong; innocent life must be in imminent danger and intervention must be to protect life.

Comparative Justice: While there may be rights and wrongs on all sides of a conflict, to overcome the presumption against the use of force, the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other

Competent Authority: Only duly constituted public authorities may wage war. “A just war must be initiated by a political authority within a political system that allows distinctions of justice. Dictatorships are typically considered as violations of this criterion.

Right Intention: Force may be used only in a truly just cause and solely for that purpose… correcting a suffered wrong is considered a right intention, while material gain or maintaining economies is not.

Probability of Success: Arms may not be used in a futile cause or in a case where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success.

Last Resort: Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted or are clearly not practical..

Proportionality: The anticipated benefits of waging a war must be proportionate to its expected evils or harms. In modern terms, just war is waged in terms of self-defense, or in defense of another (with sufficient evidence).

“The Just War Theory” has Catholic roots, but in my mind stands as wisdom unbound by any dogma. War is something that has always been difficult for me to sort out and I often been a fence straggler. I have grateful that “Jus Ad Bellum’ has been made known to me. It will a useful yardstick from now on when the politicians and generals start talking about making war, not matter how limited in scope.

There is no such thing
as a little war.
It’s like trying to say someone
is a little pregnant.
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