Becoming *real*

... In "The Velveteen Rabbit" Margery Williams talks about a little boy and his toys that become *real* ... but really the lesson is about how people become *real* to us, and how once they are real, we easily see beyond appearances ... Anyways on with the story 

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Saviour saviour where art thou?

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.

You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!”

- Kabir

"But you don't understand ... I want to save him" went a conversation I had with a friend this morning between coffee and kahlua bars. And like all conversations that raise more questions than it answers, i was left wondering what happened with Jesus then. If he indeed was trying to save us all, why did he end up being crucified for his troubles?

You cannot save anybody or help them fix their problems. You can only love them. When you love them unconditionally you're giving them the space they need to find themselves, feel affirmed as a valued person, you're giving them a reason to reach inside themselves to their deepest longings and you're giving them a lifeline to find their way back to the life they're created with their past decisions. You're giving them a reason to understand why they were hurting, and what they were doing to deal with their pain, and what they need to do to stop hurting ...

But how does one love somebody? Can one be deeply aware of somebody else if one is not in touch with their own nature or their motivations? Can we make the difficult decisions moment to moment that make life easier and easier if one has not learned to value one's own self enough to enforce the discipline required to stay true to the difficult path of sticking with a difficult decision? If one is not centered, if I don't  know my own feelings, my beliefs, then can I even begin to value what you value?

Wouldn't one of us then be in danger of being submerged by the other person's feelings, their needs, their ability to orchestrate one's emotions to meet their own ends? How can one love another when you have to stop being authentic and learn to guard what you're feeling or thinking because of what they are trying to do with us?

So to come back full circle, how can you save that person from their own manipulations? How can you help them fix their problems?

You can't. But you can begin by understanding what they mean to you. Why you are in a relationship with them in the first place. And what your priorities are in regard to this relationship. And how you feel about what they've done to you in the past. And what you want from the future from them. And if you find that your motives are clean, if you find that your needs are healthy, if you find that the way you feel about them is very healing to your past hurts or your future fears, then you are ready for love. Until then, you need to stay focused on what's going on within you, what you think about yourself, how you react and personalize what others say or do ...

The politics of relationships always begins and ends with understanding that the problems always begins ... and ends within us. When we seek to look outside or make somebody else the focus of our efforts, all we're doing is finding a way to run away from the mess inside ...

When you look in the mirror do you like what you see? When the mirror looks at you what does it see? Who's judging whom? And who is lying? When you stop seeing the surface of these truths, do you become aware of what's shaping the realities that binds you from finding love? Again I would like to quote Kabir to end this journal entry

“The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.”

It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they
swing between the arms of the Secret One you love,
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to happen.”

Way to go ...

Do you own a car? Can I ask you why?

I ditched mine last year. Gave up on paying coupla hundred bucks a month on insurance, anywhere from three hundred to five hundred a month on gas, and between hundred to two hundred dollars in parking charges, and say around a hundred bucks a month either budgeting or paying for maintenance, oil changes, brake liner replacements etc ... and if you really want to do the math, depreciating about six hundred bucks a month, every month over five years on the lease/purchase price ...

So whichever way you add it up ... you'd end up with a minimum bill of at least a thousand bucks every month if you own a car right?

Contrast that with what I pay every month ... okay last month I spend all of 150$. That's with driving to work a few times a week, shopping for groceries at least once a week, visiting with friends, going out for dinner, taking in a show, going for French classes twice a week et al ...

And that's without any of the hassles normally associated with driving. Parking? No problem. Guaranteed parking spots in the best parking lots anywhere around Toronto. Insurance zip zilch. Gas likewise nada or if you prefer hearing this in French rien.


But after paying all this money, you go for a weekend to Montreal. Or for a week in Berlin. Do you think you'd be able to use your car on these trips?

Right!!!

Whereas imagine owning a car in most every city. That's after paying zero dinero in membership fees. And either .38 cents a minute or 15$ an hour. or 70$ for the day. Everything included. yes I do mean everything. Gas, insurance, headache free driving. No matter where you are. And no worrying about returning cars where you picked them up from. You could pick it up in North York ... and drop it off in China Town. Or Vice Versa. And never have to pay a penny in parking if you'd want. And no worrying about mileage. Unlimited miles ...

You pay .38 cents a min or 15 bucks an hour. You can pick up the car where you like. And drop it off wherever you like. They have parking lots on most every street and they're pretty much de rigeur in those Green P parking lots you find all over the place. So finding a car or a place to park them is suddenly not a problem any more. They are ubiquitous. And the cars are small enough that you can compete with scooters for parking. And it comes with a built in GPS, cards for parking garages, and fuel cards for fuel, and it's using smartcars which are both environmentally friendly and fairly cool as well ...

Check out this company. It's called Car2Go and I've long since stopped using cabs to get from point A to B (this works pretty much all over downtown as well as a bit outside Toronto as well), stopped using Transit for short trips (this works out cheaper than the 3$ you'd pay a trip), and it's great for getting home

Yeah before you ask, I'm still a member of Zipcar, and also have Autoshare. And I still rent from my friend Ali at U-Rentals who gives me cars for 9 bucks a day plus taxes et all which adds up to 15$. So yeah I've done my fair share of checking out car share options. And I vote Car2Go as the way to er go :) Unless of course you want to showcase your bling in an Audi. Or a BMW. For 10$ an hour. Yeah then ZipCar looks like a sexy option. Or you need a moving van by the hour. Then AutoShare. They each have their tradeoffs and good points. But over all for me at least Car2Go wins

The reason I'm writing all this? I came out of my class tonight. Expected it to be the same pleasant evening that made me walk the half hour to class. But this is Toronto, and so in a couple of hours the sultry evening had turned into a blustery, shiver me timbers kind of night. Normally this would call for a cab. Or a train ride down to Christie pits and then a ten minute walk back to home. Or a couple of transfers via streetcars to get to my house.

Instead I walked two seconds to the parking garage next to Alliance Francaise. And then I got into a car there, and five mins later was outside the Green P half a block to the east of my house. Doorstep to doorstep in eight mins flat. For a total of 3$ and change ...

Yeah, this is how I roll these days. Time y'all started tripping this way or what?

Being at peace is a state of mind and body

Some notes from a recent expedition to the inner worlds of consciousness, where feelings are born and thoughts weave the tangled web of our perceptions. Yes folks I went to learn how to meditate at a center here in Ontario as I've been doing every few years in an attempt to learn how to purify my mind ... why? 

When the mind becomes quiet, the soul can express itself directly by filling your life with grace and clarity of purpose. Until then it lies chained in the depths of your consciousness, drowning in the sensory overload of your thoughts and feelings and cannot even begin to surface from this deluge to set you free ...

How does the mind become quiet? Well that's the purpose of meditation. You learn to witness your thoughts, your feelings without getting caught up in trying to control your experience. 

Sounds a bit difficult doesn't it. It is indeed very difficult but if you are seriously interested in discovering how to gain insight or as Buddha said "to awaken" you have to learn how to meditate. And this can only be learned by doing. Not by thinking about it, not by discussing it, not by imagining it but actually by doing it. What do we have to do you might ask ... well you have to learn to sit quietly, for ten days not talk to anybody else, and watch your thoughts wander as you try to focus in first on your breathing, and then later on the various sensations your body is experiencing second to second, moment to moment from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, slowly, carefully and attentively. This workshop gives you solid, detailed instructions as you go from session to session from Day 1 to Day 10 and it's a surprisingly liberating journey for those who take it seriously and follow the instructions diligently. But what's astonishing is that even for those who are not scrupulous in their observance of this act of witnessing their mind at work interpreting the various sensory inputs, it is still able to help them cleanse themselves of various psychosomatic issues such as migraines as has been reported by participants. But need I say that the motivation for learning meditation should not be constricted by narrow goals or we will end up remaining trapped in the realm of our shallower desires forgetting that our soul has deeper longings than wishing for an end to aches and pains, and it's these rooted values that form the core of our existence and it's this we need to get in touch with if we are to be liberated from our day to day confusion about what we really want or what we are really about ... well anyways felt that it would be the right thing to do to share what I managed to understand about this process of meditation and I have no hesitation in recommending this because the organization behind this is not a religious order, nor do they have any pecuniary considerations at all whatsoever. It's offered free to those who are interested and all they ask is that you work with them for the ten days you are there, sitting quietly and focusing on your breathing and your sensations, and in the evenings understand how this process begins to work to help you discover and release your automatic responses to things you crave or detest which form the basis of our negativized attitudes towards circumstances in general and situations in particular.

Because when you learn to be free of negativities you can then truly learn how to kindle love in your heart. Because when you plant these seeds of love, it is not just you who blossoms but everyone that's interacting with you. The whole world is lit up when even one of us become fully awakened, fully enlightened. Because as you practice meditation you will also discover that deep down all of us share the same consciousness. We are in the process of becoming who we are as individuals, inevitably fragmented into so many different aspects of this consciousness we lose sight of our deepest desire .. to come back together as one again, enlightened, grown through our challenges to a state of higher being. We don´t know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in as we learn to deal with the world in gross terms, such as careers, material milestones that can serve to help us measure us against everybody else etc. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.

Meditation, then, is bringing the mind home. 

As T.S. Elliot once said "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

If you're interested in learning meditation you can go to the following website to inform yourself and/or to register for a ten day course.

http://www.dhamma.org

What is love? Actually!

Physics, chemistry ... or alchemy of the highest order?

Is it that magic combustion that happens when you meet the *right* person? That fierce bright flame that rises hot and crackling, and melts even the hardest of barriers that guard our innermost desires ...

Or is it that slow burn in the cockles of a heart that learns to appreciate what makes somebody so utterly special that they become incandescent forever in the crucible of your soul.

Either way love for me is a relationship on fire. Whether it burns out quickly or lasts a lifetime depends on the quality of the souls that come together. Whether they combust like gasoline into a raging torrent that destroys everything they touch or they become like coals that glow deep inside themselves and remain unquenchable even after those first sparks that set them alight is gone ...

Love!!! One way or the other it will destroy your heart and turn your relationships to ashes, or make it a warmer place for all. And if love has never set your heart alight, it will remain as cold as the dawn of a winter sky.

But to those who understand that love is also a covenant, something that is kindled by soul to soul, from parent to child ... they will realize that love is also a covenant so sacred that they may even have to give up their lives to keep this fire burning on in those they have cherished and consecrated with the purity of their love.

So here's to St. Valentine who was martyred to death for bringing lovers together for life.

Have you walked on the stones of years?
When you speak, is it you that hears?
Are your ears full?

You can't hear anything at all

From Tarkus by ELP

Friendships ...

“I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?" "It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties." "To establish ties?" "Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world....” - from the book "The little prince" at times like this, when birthdays come and go, and you once again realize that there are friends who are miles away, who are still very close to your heart, and there are friends right here who have grown further and further apart ... and you wonder why ... then for me at least I wonder aloud is it me have I changed so much that some relationships no longer have the same weight in my memories, or is it them that they have learned to find new friends that matter more ... is it that friends come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, as we are led to those who will help us to grow, if we let them ... and help them in turn. But whatever may be the reasons for the distance or the intimacy, I'm grateful for the moments where we can find reasons to connect again even if it's only for the fleeting space of a Facebook post. And I learn once again the truth that what you invest is what will be returned, in attention, in understanding, in affection and in kind ... after all this is the essence of learning to love and being loved isn't it? To all my friends, good eggs all despite how cracked you may be now and then :)