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“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.”
― Kahlil Gibran

I need to make a decision...

When you become a lover of what is, there are no more decisions to make. In my life, I just wait and watch. I know that the decision will be made in its own time, so I let go of when, where and how. I like to say I'm a woman with no future. When there are no decisions to make, there's no planned future. All my decisions are made for me, just as they're all made for you. When you mentally tell yourself the story that you have something to do with it, you're attaching to an underlying belief.

For 43 years, I was always buying in to my stories about the future, buying in to my insanity. I would often return from a long trip to find the house full of dirty laundry, piles of mail on my desk, the bathroom a mess, and the sink piled high with dishes.

The first time this happened, I heard a voice that said, "Do the dishes." It was like coming upon the burning bush and the voice from the bush said, "Do the dishes."

It didn't sound very spiritual to me, but I just followed its directions. I would stand at the sink and just wash the next dish, or sit with the piles of bills and pay the one on top. Just one at a time. Nothing else was required. At the end of the day, everything would be done, and I didn't need to understand who or what did it.

When a thought appears such as "Do the dishes" and you don't do them, notice how an internal war breaks out. It sounds like this: "I'll do them later. I should have done them by now. My roommate should have done them. It's not my turn. It's not fair. People will think less of me if I don't do them now."

The stress and weariness you feel is mental combat fatigue.

What I call "doing the dishes" is the practice of loving the task in front of you. Your inner voice guides you all day long to do simple things such as brush your teeth, drive to work, call your friend, or do the dishes. Even though it's just another story, it's a very short story, and when you follow the direction of the voice, that story ends.

We are really alive when we live as simply as that – open, waiting, trusting, and loving to do what appears in front of us now.

What we need to do unfolds before us, always – doing the dishes, paying the bills, picking up the children's socks, brushing our teeth. We never receive more than we can handle, and there is always just one thing to do. Life never gets more difficult than that.

– An excerpt from Loving What Is, Byron Katie.

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

—Dashiell Hammett

Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another.
—Yuri Kochiyama

My vote is my voice ... and the voice of all who struggled, so that I may have my voice. —Lydia C. Obasi

There is a scene in “Lemonade” that highlights Sybrina Fulton, Gwenn Carr and Lesley McSpadden holding portraits of their sons, respectively: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown. And these three women also appear in other segments of the visual album. As I watched, I was struck by the physical beauty of all three women, but I was also left to ponder: how do they wake up each morning, wipe their grieving eyes, and still continue to do good in the world?

Beyoncé’s work forces us to see these women not only as grieving mothers, but so much more—they are tied to the legacy of black women on plantations who nurtured children they knew would be sold at auction. They are connected to black women who preached in the clearing, knowing they would never be welcome in someone’s pulpit. They are connected to black women who practiced the healing arts, when the doors of the hospital were closed to colored people. All the black women in “Lemonade” are connected to a long line of women who conjured a life when the forces of racism and sexism insisted that they weren’t worthy of living.

Art is always a resource for spiritual reflection, and “Lemonade” is an aural and visual feast for black women who cannot find reflections of themselves in the liturgy, sacred texts, icons, and stained glass of their own traditions. It is a work that is particular and specific: it is a love letter and an ode to black women, deeply rooted in African-American history.

—from Black Women and the Sacred: With 'Lemonade' Beyonce Takes Us to Church by Yolanda Pierce,

Too much is no good, but plenty is alright! - Me ;)

John Godfrey Saxe

I'LL FIND A WAY OR MAKE IT.

IT WAS A NOBLE ROMAN, IN ROME'S IMPERIAL DAY,
WHO HEARD A COWARD CROAKER, BEFORE THE CASTE SAY,-
"THEY'RE SAFE IN SUCH A FORTRESS; THERE IS NO WAY TO SHAKE IT"!
"ON! ON!" EXCLAIMED THE HERO; "I'LL FIND A WAY, OR MAKE IT."

IS FAME YOUR ASPIRATION? HER PATH IS STEEP AND HIGH;
IN VAIN HE SEEKS HER TEMPLE; CONTENT TO GAZE AND SIGH.
THE SHINING THRONE IS WAITING, BUT HE ALONE CAN TAKE IT
WHO SAYS WITH ROMAN FIRMNESS, "I'LL FIND A WAY OR MAKE IT"!

IS LEARNING YOUR AMBITION? THERE IS NO ROYAL ROAD;
ALIKE THE PEER AND PEASANT MUST CLIMB TO HER ABODE;
WHO FEELS THE THURST FOR KNOWLEDGE , IN HELICON MAY SLAKE IT,
IF HE HAS STILL THE ROMAN WILL, "TO FIND A WAY, OR MAKE IT!"

ARE RICHES WORTH THE GETTING? THEY MUST BE BRAVELY SOUGHT;
WITH WISHING AND WITH FRETTING THE BOON CANNOT BE BOUGHT;
TO ALL THE PRIZE IS OPEN, BUT ONLY HE CAN TAKE IT,
WHO SAYS, WITH ROMAN COURAGE, "I'LL FIND A WAY, OR MAKE IT !"

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands
of miles and all the years you have lived. - Helen Keller

https://img1.etsystatic.com/053/0/56...02177_dge1.jpg

Matthieu Caldwell, Metaphysician:

"In Gil Scott Heron's song "Not Needed", Heron croons about the dreary existence of irrelevance. Through music he captures a universal feeling that is perhaps the source of existential angst. Modern cognitive psychology lends credence to what heart has known for ages. The essence of cognition is constructing a narrative in which the ego is placed at the center. In our minds we each star in our own personal dramas. This is why theatre, literature, movies, operas, etc have such an appeal to the human psyche because they mirror the very mechanism which constructs each person's subjective reality. Awareness of this phenomena can help one understand the source of their despair and illuminate paths that can help lead them out of the dark and menacing labyrinth that is their life story.

In American culture the most people's personal dramas focus on the work place. America is a land that idolizes money and thus working becomes our primary method of worship. It is analogous to the ascetic's suffering. Every morning when the average American sits down at this desk to begin another day at work he is like a monk who kneels down at the alter hungry and ready to please his Lord. At work the drama unfolds in harrowing epics in which Sergeant Romeo attempts to woo Major Juliet so that he may get the sweet jewels of loves exhalation via a promotion. God forbid, if one fails to woo their beloved Juliet, only despair rules the heart that fails to attain true love. While this language may seem melodramatic for some, its sentiment is quite fitting for many people whose lives are centered on the workplace. An important caveat to make is that each person's drama is unique. Some people live their lives with the scale of emotion and drama found in a Shakespearean drama whereas some people are content living the life of a carefree character in a SITCOM. Regardless of the weight of importance each person feels they are still fundamentally shaped by a need to feel relevant.

Many people find the need to feel relevant to everyone they meet. The proverbial people pleaser is not just content with being the hero of their own drama but they also need to universalize their heroism. They need to feel loved by everyone or else their life is a complete and miserable failure. American culture does an excellent job at exploiting this fundamental insecurity. At the root of advertising is the sinister voice that says "unless you purchase this product, people will not like you as much". No one attempts to sell a product any other way when it comes down to it.

So how do I fulfil my desire to feel relevant? Most of the world's religions argue that helping others is the ultimate relevancy. "Do unto others as you would have done onto you" is the golden rule the Christ imbues to his followers. Perhaps a deeper solution is given by Hinduism/Buddhism and that is to deny the very source of the drama. Thus the drama, consciousness itself is constructed off of an illusion (samsara) and the only way to escape is to deny the self until it dissolves into the unity of the world. This vision may seem too lofty and abstract but it really gets to the source of why we have dramas in the first place. The evolutionary psychologist would coyly reply that a drama created as a cognitive methods is most productive to survival. A scientific answer does nothing to relieve the primordial pain of meaningless that confronts every human being at one point of the other.

The best way to balance the drama of our lives is to have the heart of a child and the mind of a monk. The Bhagavad Gita says that “He who recognizes inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among men”. A child constructs fantasies with voracity, plays games with passion, loves unconditionally and always wants to have fun. A monk knows that the superficial appearance and game of the “real world” is a facade and mediates on what is real. To fuse these two aspects like Yin and Yang is to explore life with the passion and joy of a child while knowing in the mind with the sage of a Forest Dweller that “the real world” is a veil. This idea somewhat echoes Nietzche’s conception of the Overman who finds his will to power and exult his creativity over the conformity and constant moral guilt of the world. Like a child one should construct their own reality with the passion in their heart and love like the whole world was there mother who they depended upon for sustenance. Like a monk one should take the suffering a sick world seriously but with wisdom know the root cause of the cosmic drama."