Why should I continue to suffer from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home?

- A Course in Miracles

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

- F.W. Bourdillon

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

- Sydney J. Harris
journalist and author
(1917-1986)

Music washes from the soul the dust of everyday lfe.

- Laurel Doremus

oh window pane, o weather vane mark out my course described in vain beware the wind, deny the rain a dervish twirl that parts the twain the room is calm and smooth as plane shivering still, undone again

- Laurel Doremus

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

- Albert Schweitzer
philosopher, physician, musician
(1875-1965)

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

- Anatole France
novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate
(1844-1924)

It is no measure of mental health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Krishnamurti

In an insane world, a sane man must appear insane. - Spock

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. - Marcus Aurelius

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane. - Hermann Hesse

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free. - Nikos Kazantzakis

Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world. - R.D. Lang

Illumination, a poem by Eric Paul Shaffer

On those cold, clear winter mornings, I rise in the dark, and I sit

beneath a lamp with a pen and paper in a circle of light

barely bright enough for the work. The window beside me is black

and blank, and soon I'm staring only through the window of the page

at whatever I'm drawing from ink and concentration. Hours pass,

and, always when I least expect it, there's a sudden tide of light

as the sun crests the mountain. When the first rays flood the fields,

the thin yellow curtain behind me brightens, and the room swells

with light. Everything is suddenly golden and illuminated,

and for just that one moment, I make the glorious and forgivable

mistake of thinking it has something to do with me.

published in the August 2011 issue (Issue 428) of The Sun (http://www.thesunmagazine.org/)

The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble.

- Sam Keen

I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.

- Mirabai

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.

- Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which…. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both…

- Zen Buddhist teaching

I found the answer [to how and what to paint] when I joined a school of painters in Paris after the war who called themselves neomeditationists. . . . They believed an artist had to wait for inspiration, very quietly, and they did most of their waiting at the Cafe du Dome or the Rotonde with brandy. It was then that I realized that all the really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. So I went back to Iowa.

- Grant Wood

(thanks to The Sun Magazine's "Sunbeams" column for this and the previous post, both in the November 1998 issue)

I was a neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resisted them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't no matter how hard I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Then, one day, he said to me, "Don't change. I love you just as you are."

- Anthony De Mello

Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting in the shed, I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Happy is one who hath the power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Two by Rumi

If you want to know God,
Then turn your face toward your friend,
And don't look away.

*     *     *     *     *     *

Out beyond the ideas of right doing and wrong doing
There lies a field.
I'll meet you there.

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

- Japanese Proverb

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

- Carl Jung

When you're going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

- George MacDonald

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.

- Henry James

Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;
So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

- William Shakespeare

The purpose of life is to unlearn what has been learned, and to remember what has been forgotten.

- a Sufi saying

"Dad, look at this!"

1 apple + 1 little boy = a discovery about the creativity in each of us:

A couple of years ago, my oldest son accosted me with news from kindergarten as I came home from my office at Harvard University.  He had learned something about apples and wanted to demonstrate.  Out of the drawer came a knife, one of those he was not supposed to handle, and out of the refrigerator a McIntosh.  "Dad," he said, "Let me show you what's inside an apple."

"I know what's inside an apple," I said, riding for a fall.

"C'mon, just let me show you."

"Listen, I've cut open lots of apples.  Why ruin an apple just to show me something I already know?"

"Just take a look."

Ungracefully, I gave in.  He cut the apple in half - the wrong way.  We all know the right way to cut apples.  One starts at the stem and slices through to the dimple on the bottom.  However, he turned the apple on its side, sliced the apple in half perpendicular to the stem, and displayed the result.  "See, Dad.  There's a star inside."

Sure enough, there was.  In cross section, the core of the apple made a distinct five-pointed star.  How many apples I had eaten in my life, cutting them in half the right way and never suspecting the hidden pattern waiting for me!  Then one day my child brought news of it home, out to convert the infidel - and he did.

I have not tried to find out, but I'm sure this star-shaped structure is common knowledge in botany, where no doubt there are students of apples who do dissections of McIntosh and Golden Delicious, nibbling the scraps as they go.  Whoever first sliced an apple the "wrong" way may well have had a good reason to do so, curiosity being one good reason.  Or it might have been one of those fruitful - I use the word carefully - mistakes all of us make sometimes.  What struck me then and still impresses me now is that this hidden pattern fascinated enough to make its way around.  The knowledge of it traveled from unknown origins to my son's kindergarten class and so to me and now to you.  Its very survival and vigor as something to know about vouches for the engagement we find in discovery.

So, if you want to know what creativity is about, in part it's about an apple - sliced the "wrong" way.

- David Perkins, The Mind's Best Work (1981)
(I came upon this excerpt in the September 1982 issue of Family Circle magazine)

Never throw anyone out of your heart.  People, more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed.

- Eb & Deb Shapiro

Because I love, the Summer air quivers with a thousand wings.

- Kathleen Raine

Tasting a deeper stillness within our own being, we no longer feel compelled to escape from ourselves into a world of distraction or flee from a life that has previously been experienced as overpowering.

- Christina Feldman, Silence: How to Find Inner Peace in a Busy World

As long as you cling to the idea of the way "life is supposed to be," your life circumstances will continue to reflect a perspective that sees itself at the effect of circumstances beyond your control.

- The Wisdom of Oneness, through Rasha
   http://www.onenesswebsite.com/

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

- James Oppenheim,

Twenty, from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu

Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.

Is there a difference between yes and no?
Is there a difference between good and evil?
Must I fear what others fear?  What nonsense!
Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am.
Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool.  Oh, yes! I am confused.
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.

Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.

The secret of happiness is freedom.
The secret of freedom is courage.

- Thucydides

I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

- Helen Keller

The Criteria of Emotional Maturity, by William C. Menninger, MD

• The ability to deal constructively with reality
• The capacity to adapt to change
• A relative freedom from symptoms that are produced by tensions and anxieties
• The capacity to find . . . satisfaction in giving . . . [and] receiving
• The capacity to relate to other people in a consistent manner with mutual satisfaction and helpfulness
• The capacity to sublimate, to direct one's instinctive hostile energy into creative and constructive outlets
• The capacity to love

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

- Ryokan

(thanks to http://www.deeshan.com/)

In a time of universal deceit, truth-telling becomes a revolutionary act.

- George Orwell, quoted in The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision, by James Redfield)

(thanks to Gregg Braden for posting this on Facebook)

Only the Cinema: Mildred Pierce (episodes 4-5)

I happened to catch just these two episodes, which were riveting.  The below link describes it well and is beautifully written.  Thanks, Ed Howard!

Only the Cinema: Mildred Pierce (episodes 4-5): "episodes 1-2 episode 3 episodes 4-5 In the final two episodes of Todd Haynes' HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, the story leaps forward i..."

excerpt from "The Dancer of the Future," by Isadora Duncan

(written in 1902 or 1903.  c. 1909.)

The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.  The dancer will not belong to a nation but to all humanity.  She will dance not in the form of nymph, nor fairy, nor coquette, but in the form of woman in her greatest and purest expression.  She will realize the mission of woman's body and the holiness of all its parts.  She will dance the changing life of nature, showing how each part is transformed into the other.  From all parts of her body shall shine radiant intelligence, bringing to the world the message of the thoughts and aspirations of thousands of women.  She shall dance the freedom of woman.

Oh, what a field is here awaiting her!...She will help womankind to a new knowledge of the possible strength and beauty of their bodies, and the relation of their bodies to the earth, nature and to the children of the future.  She will dance the body emerging again from centuries of civilized forgetfulness, emerging not in the nudity of primitive man, but in a new nakedness, no longer at war with spirituality and intelligence, but joining with them in a glorious harmony.

This is the mission of the dancer of the future....her movements will become godlike, mirroring in themselves the waves, the winds, the movements of growing things, the flight of birds, the passing of clouds, and finally the thought of man in his relation to the universe.

Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future: the free spirit, who will inhabit the body of new woman, more glorious than any woman that has yet been; more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the Greek, the early Italian, than all women of past centuries -- the highest intelligence in the freest body!

quote by Henry David Thoreau

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Prayer for Protection (1941), by James Dillet Freeman (1912 - 2003)

The light of God surrounds me;
The love of God enfolds me;
The power of God protects me;
The presence of God watches over me.
Wherever I am, God is!

quote by Eckhart Tolle

Most people are so distracted by their thoughts, so identified with the voices in their heads, they can no longer feel the aliveness within them.  To be unable to feel the life that animates the physical body, the very life that you are, is the geatest deprivation that can happen to you.

Poem by Chinese poet Li Po (c. 700-762)

You ask why I live in the mountain forest,
and I smile and am silent,
And even my soul remains quiet:
It lives in the other world
Which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.

The best things in life, by Robert Louis Stevenson

The best things in life are nearest.
Breath in your nostrils,
light in your eyes,
flowers at your feet,
duties at your hand,
the path of right just before you.

The Eighties: A Reminiscence

From "A Sprocket in Satan's Bulldozer: Confessions of an Investment Banker," by Ted Rall, in issue number 6 of Might, a bimonthly published in San Francisco.  Rall worked at the New York City branch of the Industrial Bank of Japan from 1986 to 1990.  He is now a cartoonist.

In early 1986, one of our clients, Mitsui Real Estate Ltd., expressed interest in purchasing the Exxon Building in Manhattan.  Mitsui asked us to contact Exxon and find out how much they wanted.  Exxon's asking price of $375 million for the 1970s-style building seemed high to us, and we knew that Exxon was hot to sell.  We relayed the price to Mitsui and told them that Exxon would probably accept a lower offer.

A few weeks later Mitsui called to say that they wanted to offer Exxon $610 million.

Neither my boss nor I could believe it.  We prodded our rep at Mitsui for information, and he finally admitted their reason for deliberately overpaying by $235 million: "Our president read that the current record price paid for a single building, as listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, is $600 million.  He wants to beat the record."

Exxon's lawyers were perplexed.  "Look, just pay us the asking price of $375 million, and everything'll be fine.  We can't accept more than the asking price -- the regulators will think you're bribing us."

Mitsui insisted: they would pay $610 million or nothing at all.  Why not $600,000,001?  Because the record breaker had to look good.  That extra ten million would be for appearance -- as was, in fact the whole deal.  How about a more expensive building?  No, this one had the right location.

Exxon almost turned down the money, but then their lawyers came through: "If Mitsui can get us an opinion stating that it is legal to overpay to this extreme extent, we will consent to accepting the offer."

A half hour before Mitsui's president was supposed to sign the contracts, my boss and I sat down with him to argue.  We presented our research.

"It isn't necessary to go through with this.  If it's publicity you're looking for, there are better ways.  We could put Mitsui's name on every billboard in America for a year.  The ad agencies would be thrilled.  We called the New York City Board of Education: that money would bring the facilities at every public school in all five boroughs up to current standards.  The press would be huge!  Isn't that better than some listing in the Guinness Book?"

This clearly wasn't registering.

"The City says they can build apartment units for homeless people at $10,000 a pop.  That's twenty-five thousand people off the streets--the Coalition for the Homeless says there's only forty thousand in the whole city?  Think about it -- 'Mitsui virtually eliminates poverty in New York City!'"

He listened politely as we pleaded for his quarter-billion.  Then he left to sign the papers.  We went back to our offices.  I've never felt so dirty.

********************************

[Note: This piece was published in the August 1995 issue of Harper's Magazine, in their "[Anecdote]" column.  I happened to be working in this building at the time, for the Anderson Kill & Olick law firm. Thanks to Gene Anderson for copying and distributing it (with his handwritten "A Little Building History" on top) to his employees.  By the way, the building was a beautiful and well-maintained place to work. - WT]

quote by Albert Schweitzer

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.  Each of us has cause to think with gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Seeing the Joy of Life

Two selections from the June 2010 issue of O Magazine:

Regaining Your Eyesight after 33 Years of Blindness

"Simple everyday things bring me to tears.  Watching butter being spread is fascinating.  Cutting my meat without struggling gives me so much joy.  I look at my husband and say, 'I did that myself.'  I'm surrounded by so much beauty and color: my husband's blue eyes, the red pieces on the Candy Land game that my grandson and I play, the way the light hits the colored glass windows at church, the stark branches against the blue winter sky.  I've been watching movies of my children when they were in high school, playing volleyball, acting in plays.  Imagining them doing those things wasn't the same.  I was 23 when I lost my sight, and my children were 2 and 5.  When I see my young grandchildren, it's as if I'm looking at my children again when they were little -- picturing how the wind blew my daughter's hair across the side of her face.  I can't wait to witness my granddaughter's first steps.  And I love watching my grandson dance.  When he used to visit and wanted to play outside, he always knew that Grandma stayed on the deck.  But I recently told him, 'Grandma isn't going to stay on the deck anymore.'"

- Jenny Peterson, who received a prosthetic implant in January 2010 to restore the sight that she lost in 1976 after a reaction to antibiotics

*          *          *          *          *

Seeing the World From the Top of a 16-Story Tree

"It's like climbing to outer space.  There are millions of undiscovered creatures in every nook and cranny.  Some are two feet long, some smaller than a raindrop.  At 165 feet up, I'm the first to see rain on the horizon.  There are 1,000 shades of green, and I usually can't see the forest floor.  Sometimes I stay overnight, and it's too much fun to sleep.  The tree's strong architecture is very protecting.  The swaying lulls me like I'm a baby.  At night the insects chew and chirp - it's a symphony by Mother Nature, Times Square in the forest."

- Tropical rainforest canopy biologist and conservationist Margaret D. Lowman, PhD, who began taking her two children up with her into the treetops when they were 4 and 6 years old