My Precious Life

This life is precious, capiche?  My life is precious.  With all my shortcomings, my hesitations, my procrastinations, my depressions, my acute awareness of mistakes made and challenges still unmet.  My life is precious, it is full of more incarnations than I'd even know - yet one and singular, and here and now.  It is full of joy.

I love this life, all that I have not yet done or seen, or may never, or revisited - I love this life and where I am now, and with whom.  All that I love, and all whom I love, my partner and my son, the animals in our life, children, grandchildren - met and unmet - family, siblings and their families, all, all...all.  The co-workers in my life, the city I occupy, the people I train with evenings, the people I walk the streets with of an evening and hold public talks among.  All that I have ever experienced in my life, all ups or downs, all heights or depths, all glories and shame, I own and I recall.

All who are in my life, or have been in my life and therefore still are - I want them there - I would miss them were I to depart it.

But I will come now to the point, for this is not any kind of parting word toward any one, not a testimony, nor even any form of reminiscence to conjure a sigh or wipe a tear - nothing of the sort.

I will stake this very life, this precious life, on the premise - no, the certainty - that I am right.  If about nothing else since a long time, then this:  I was right to vote for The Donald, to vote for Trump.  I was right to see in him promises meant, and meant to be kept - to the best of his ability.  I was right to see in him the ability to push the envelope, to go where frankly no other President has ever gone.  I was right.  And I remain so.

I will stake my life on it.

When I consider the incomprehensible vastness, extent, enormity, of the pedophile network among the elite on down, of satanic cultism among the elite on down, of the real intent of globalists, of the real intent behind courting and laying out carpet for the Islamisation fo the West, of the incessant Deep State hold on power, on war-profiteering; when I consider the cruel irony of a world gone so Left as to embrace Communism and gaslighting its way deeper and deeper into the darkness, or the sheer harrowing lunacy of what passes for "political office" - or what passes for "journalism", or what passes for "academia" - in Europe, in Germany, in all of the Trump-hating, Trump-bashing venues, here and Stateside, one could name - when I consider all this:

I know I am right.  And when I go deep into my spirit, and repose in God, knowing it was His guidance which moved me not to abstain, but to cast my vote and to keep it there, I'd stake my life on it.

Come what may - though we are beset with unspeakable evils being pawned off as "relative norms", or as misinterpreted, or as more enriching, more colorful, more opulent, more preferable, more diverse, more interesting, more feeling, more open - there is a swamp, a great and terrible swamp, which in our own day will be swept through and cleaned out, for there is a river.

What Trump has in store, is as underestimated by his adversaries as is the force behind the groundswell which launched him to Office.  It was not his ego, that was just one of the conditions for his being the one whose time has come to take the reins.  Under these conditions it could not have been less than this.  And he needs our prayers.  Because he is there for us.  For America and for the West.  Those planning European extinction here are but themselves destined for it, those working assiduously on Germany's extinction will but themselves wind up the panicked carcasses left in the frozen mud and slime of their own ice age, whipped by the coldness of their own brittle hearts - they underestimate the intention brewing in the White House, forged in the Oval.  Globalism will fall by its own feet of clay, its gold and silver and bronze will shatter beneath those very feet.  The EU will be as an unwieldy house, topheavy and built on sand, sinking into its own stinking mire.  And nations will rebuild and heal, to reaffirm their sovereignties in a community of mutual regard and compatible trade.

Right - maybe it'll fly, maybe it won't, maybe...maybe it's not worth fighting for, worth taking to the streets for, speaking out for, writing for, being frustrated over, seeing people divided over or distancing themselves over - maybe it's too much for Trump to move it, maybe it's too much to expect of the conservative movements and parties in EUrope to assert themselves, overcome their caution and push that envelope, maybe not.

But I know that I did something right when I put my pen to that ballot with a firm conviction, and would do it again if given that proverbial chance.  I'd stake my life on it.

This precious life.

The Sparrow And The Butterfly

This is an old posting, but it occurs to me to elaborate on a point or two. What I described in one part there, is what is commonly referred to – though the term didn't cross my mind and I prefer it that way – as The Butterfly Effect, for whatever reason. Two (or more) strangers get up one morning, go about their day, and like some unseen orchestration of events full of "chance" factors and detours, wending their way in a process which comes to a head when one loses control of the wheel, let's say (why, is far less relevant here) inadvertantly causing, or even – as in the third example given below – intentionally causing a collision, with our without injuries, fatalities, but certainly leaving havoc and wreckage in its wake.

I was sitting parked in a company car late one evening in September, I might have taken off back to the office but stayed for a few minutes to go over my mileage, driver's door partly open to keep the light on. The street is long, straight and boring, young idiots are known to race their cars down it for shits-and-grins, doing what we'd call 90 or more. One such idiot zoomed right by me, in the opposite direction, passing me as I mused, "Schmuck – you'll get yours". No sooner had the thought entered my head, it was interrupted by him veering left a mere couple yards behind me and slamming into some five unoccupied parked cars, totalling his and these. That it turned out he was 17, had stolen Grampa's car, possessed no license, and was stoned out of his mind – and fled the scene – is irrelevant to my point, just more "chance" factors for The Butterfly. The demolition was so forceful, had he veered one second earlier, that month would have carried my obit. Had I just left when I'd gotten into my car, I'd have missed the whole affair.

Yesterday a co-worker of mine had just finished a morning shift, and was parked in her own car just down the cute, quiet, narrow street somewhat behind our workplace. A 68-year-old guy in a jeep, driving at a normal pace within that little street's allowed limit, suddenly suffered a heart attack at the wheel. Bummer. But he rammed right into the back end of my co-worker's car, totalling both that and the jeep. That she is fortunately at home recuperating from crash-trauma but presumably no serious injuries, and he was resuscitated by paramedics and hospitalized – is likewise irrelevant to my point, just more "chance" factors for The Butterfly.

On December 19, 2016, a semi truck driven by an Islamic terrorist who'd murdered the actual polish truck driver found afterward on the passenger side, veered into a crowd of Christmas shoppers, Berliners and out-of-towners, visitors from all over, resulting in 12 fatalities, a number of injured, and a whole lot of trauma. That he was part of Merkel's Grand Plan, was courted all along by Homeland Security, in concert with some 60 agencies all of whose sole job specifically deals with policing crime and ensuring security, and that the matter was granted the usual Merkellian gaslighting procedure of instrumentalizing, excusing, denying, and then ignoring the drastic and urgent need by the public to see a take-charge attitude of clarification, responsibility, pro-active prevention, and of course finally secure borders and controlled Muslim immigration or an end to it altogether – are also irrelevant right here only as (admittedly less than "chance") factors for Madame Butterfly.

The point here is that you cannot know when something is about to occur in your own personal sphere during your own day. You cannot be smarter, wiser, fatalistic, non-fatalistic, go out in groups, go out alone, stay indoors, never drive, drive more safely, be a better person, don't change anything – and make a difference in whether you may be parked where I was or parked where my co-worker was, or using a public facility or visiting a Christmas market. None of these will make you less vulnerable or less mortal, or less a part of this Butterfly thing.

What will however make a certain difference because of its dimension in your own life, is to get very consciously appreciative of your own life and living, at every moment – a relaxed concentration on your own love of living, of being alive, of being grateful for every day you are here in this body, for every breath you draw, before it should be taken from you. Not after. In the most humble tone of gratitude for being here, for living: live your joy, express it. Gratitude gives latitude, when attitude opens you to a certain very present grace, here – and now. What does that get you? It will make you more aware.

It will make you more aware in a dimension which only deepens with practice, deepens with time, consonant with time and effects and "chance" factors. And if it is, as one says, your time to go – you go with an awareness which makes all the difference in the world. Without this awareness, this simple, quiet awe of living, your coming or going or staying or leaving remain feeling irrelevant, meaningless, mere factors for that Butterfly.

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2014/12/not-sparrow-falleth.html

Getting Impermanence

Of course we really know that nothing is permanent, and it is in our
altogether human nature to resist it, to fight knowing it, and in a certain sense
this is understandable and even healthy.

What is understandable in it is that by our grasping we delude ourselves
out of a primal fear of losing what we are identified with, having not tasted
our basic nature - or better, having forgotten the taste of it.

What is healthy and quite sane however, is the demonstration in this
of concentration of our own creative and constructive will and activity toward
making something manifest and holding that in place.

This shows responsibility, maturity, a will to develop and to benefit oneself
and others, one's environment.  That, even knowing, acknowledging that
anything is existentially impermanent, one gives all human effort of mind,
of body, of nerve, of heart and soul to create and to hold.

When "the impermanence of all things" gets sifted through the filter
of lazy egos which have merely ridden on the gravy trains of those
who've worked and striven and left something solid, one sees an attitude
of ingratitude, of complacency, of indifference, of narcissistic demands
full of excuses for everything but one's own responsibility:  one sees "SJWs"...

Or laid-back (passive-aggressive) "anti-materialists"  full of moralisms
and without morals, exhoritng and cajoling with more "demands" than
their pens can catch up with.  No, pens would be inaccurate:  for the very
Twitter and I-Phone culture of this time speaks of even the spoken word,
the written or printed idea, as being of no permanence, and in this is meant:
of no importance, of "no matter"...showing no character.

This is not Right Thinking, to which the real dharmic instructions on impermanence belong.
One who is clear about impermanence is apt to appreciate things for what they are in all their native beauty, rather than to go out to destroy them.
One who is clear about impermanence knows that a rose always grows and then goes,
that it withers and dies on its own - one needn't trample the rosebed for that,
in order to lay waste and not even have a clue about developing
that same soil and producing something of equal or better or higher value.

One speaks of "capitalists," how attached they are to what they create,
edifices to their own monumental egos.  That may well be so, but they still create -
and as times move the creative impulse moves with it,
conscious of impermanence or not.

Fascism, socialism, communism - full of Four- and Five-Year-Plans,  controlling, controlling,
and presuming to usher in the next "utopia" with a Wall or a Camp or a Gulag or a Prison:
its wannabes stoning police, setting public and private property afire,
mobbing and exercising unbridled puerile psycho-terror -
for the express purpose of "demonstrating impermanence" and in so doing
merely vomiting forth their own total disregard for life itself.

One who really, but really, gets impermanence of all things treats all things
all the moreso with care and with dignity - and more importantly: all sentient
beings, that being: Human, animal, vegetation, the earth.
For if this life is impermanent, then it stands to reason, that compassion
must be real, awareness must be conscious, and every thing and every one
must be appreciated, natively and intimately.

Lovingkindness

When love is drawn from its totality and applied in action there is no longer an abstractness to philosophize about.  Even kindness alone finds its limitation in one’s own self-identification and its "demand" upon oneself or upon others to necessarily "show" that toward everyone.

Lovingkindness draws its impulse and its power from love, imbuing kindness with a release from self in the fuller expression of one’s true nature.

The source of that nature is love, and ever was love.  The source drives the force of action, and guides it all, as does Krishna the chariot of Arjuna on the battlefield.

If I acknowledge myself to be a mere drop of water, then it's a matter of course that I draw something from a river current which is constant, which has no beginning or end.  And that river has its source in the sea, in the ocean by whichever name – likewise, wending its way through life’s terrains, gathering and losing and being wet, returning to that sea or that ocean by whatever name.

So neither orthodox nor heretic, nor the zealous fundamentalist nor the atheist, need impress me in the least; for, it not being "about me" I can concern myself with the source, practice lovingkindness without "being right" or "expecting" tolerance from anyone at all.  It is one of the sincerest proofs of real independence, if it is anything.

Lovingkindness is not developing a head in the clouds but a head on your shoulders, with two eyes focused straight ahead on the living being right in front of you, and a full-bodied love pouring from the heart getting you wet and everyone in proximity to you.  Wet with light.  It doesn't "belong" to you, so you don't have to sweat "owning" it or "proving anything.  Even proximity is but as limited as your own imagination.

My beloved friend Joe Miller often said, "what is needed are three things: common sense, a sense of humor, and more common sense."

This in turn cultivates a real and authentic generosity.

Spending more time with that source, rather than eating up one's valuable time and energy over "being right" or "expecting kindness" or spouting "tolerance", would profit the very depth of anyone actively appreciating the precious opportunities one's own life has presented one without going out and looking for anything to "confirm" one's self-identity.

And one would find more confidence in prayer, if one cared to discover the value in that.

Lovingkindness is not collecting clothes or money, or dragging care packages all over - one may do that of course, it's alright.  When the Beloved Embodiment in my life, of relying on the source, first communicated to me in three simple instructions:  love everyone, serve (or feed) everyone, remember God - that "serving" meant being conscious toward all and that "feeding" meant nourishing.  Food and goods are but forms of nourishment.  Christ said there is water from which to drink, by which none shall ever after know thirst.  And that by immersing in the source, streams of living water will flow from your belly.

It is also lovingkindness to take a stand, to hold the unpopular position, to not shrink from battle when faced with the gravest challenge on the field of endeavor from the very forces who are not bringing with them any manner of lovingkindness.

It behoves one to probe what taking Human form is about.

Kabir Wept

Every waking moment of our sleeping life

we are confronted with our impending mortality,

fixed in time yet neither being here nor being now.

Eliot gave us the best English has to offer on this,

Kabir wept on seeing in the miller’s grains how we

resemble in fate the seeds on his stone wheel turning,

getting pounded by the stick as it churns and churns.

The miller’s response became grist for the Hindi verses

which were to follow long after he took the miller’s advice:

"Consider the grains which stay close to that stick’s action -

they just bounce there and remain whole, they don’t fall through;

that stick is the Guru, and yours is living down that way there - so GO!"

It’s been said, "Guru is the grace-bestowing power of God;"

it’s been said, "Guru is that which alone can change the course of your destiny."

And it’s been said, "The root of meditation is the Guru’s form,

the root of worship is the Guru’s feet, the root of mantra is the Guru’s word,

the root of liberation is the Guru’s grace."

Whether appearing as monk or as mendicant, neighbor or wise uncle,

he is no person and no form, though taking on both to serve Liberation.

Principle as person, Formless as form to be met, in humility, in effacement. 

There are finally, no words for it, nothing can describe what Guru is.

When the heart has been touched by his grace, love flows.

When the crown has been opened by his shakti, death’s shadow goes.

When the entire question of life or death, hereafter, has lost its sting:

then can all things Body and Mind in action celebrate, relax - and sing!

Contemplating "Suicide" – 2B or not 2B...

Having recently come across a message showing a young girl with a sign reading: "Suicide does not end the chances of life getting worse, suicide eliminates the chances of it ever getting better," I was moved by the image, and commented as follows:

Life is not "short."
I take no pleasure in hearing when lives are cut short (man, woman, teen or child, animals or Nature). As John Donne beautifully put it in No Man is an Island: "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved with mankind."

In view of our eternity – yes ours, let's own it – a life is indeed short. (I'm 60 and I want to stick around much longer, I'm half-way there). But life is not short. It is long, ever so long, and supercedes our short-sighted view of what length and strength and grace mean. How long or short life appears is entirely also relative, but how rich and enriched and enriching a life is, is often undervalued, understated, worst of all one's own.

Life, each and every life, is sacred, by God! it is sacred. Who does not respect that is dead already, but can be resurrected even now, this moment – it does happen.

Some would view what I am saying skeptically, because so many have deep personal and situational histories and issues, societal, social, or psychological issues, physical and mental health issues – and we are so self-conscious about our being here, cutting ourselves down, then cutting others down to compensate for that, cowering and dominating, both.

Some have depression to battle with – and I intimately do understand that, because I am involved with mankind – I'm a healthcare-giver long in the tooth, and a masseur to boot, including plenty of psychiatric.

But life matters, your life matters, and you matter. You, reading this, whoever you are (or by whomever this winds up), listen to me once: God loves you. Trust me on this, I know, and I have proof: because I love you. And I want you living.

That's it. Oh, and there's this bit I did compose back in 2005, passing a typically dour-faced, aged-before-her-time, obediently-dressed Turkish Muslim woman at my bus stop one evening:

What sort of religion is that then,
that lends you no joy
wherewith the world may see your smiling forehead,
your heart radiating love for Humankind?
What sort of faith teaches you no singing
instead of shouting or that tight-assed mistrust in your glance,
and contempt toward the "other"?
Sure, everybody has woes, who doesn't -
but honestly now: has no one ever told you
that God's name is compassionate and merciful?
. . . that He is indeed nearer to you than your jugular vein,
nearer indeed than your breath?
. . . or that in Him we live and move and have our Being?
. . . perhaps even once, that He dwells within you, actually as you?
And is that then no cause for joy?
 
And now, in almost closing, I offer this great in its own right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cgcx-GJTQ
Dylan Thomas reciting his villanelle 'Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night'

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(To which I take the liberty of adding here...)

And now you, my dear, contemplating suicide,
Curse the fierce confusion of your life, if you will.
But don't "go gentle into  that good night," don't go at all!
Stay, stay and choose the worthy fight, and it's you
                                                                      who must decide!