Little Blogs 2

Is anyone noticing that the world and its heightened threats, turmoils, wars, repetitive hysterical news and cartoon leaders is becoming overwhelming in its demands for attention, for anxiety, for hysteria, for overhwhelming, battering bad news?

My ninety-year old aunt, a news addict if I ever saw one, every day recounts to me all the disasters from wars and murders to abuse of children in day care and the torturing of cats, which - according to her - people are doing again but now getting arrested for it. She is completely addicted, which I often attempt to lead her to see - but impossible it is.

I believe now that such an "addiction" comes from the fear and anxiety that underlines most of our lives in this anxiety-ridden age. But it can do something else, something opening and deepening as well. A point is reached - when you recognize it, when you step back and examine its effects on your own life - when you can make a choice to step out of that daily pounding, repetitive news blast into a chosen time of quiet or even silence; of reading and writing, of listening to music, of turning into the mystery of your own soul - which - believe it or not - need NOT be affected by the outer delirium. In fact, opening the inner doors, is what is demanded of us now. It is where wisdom lives. There are many many paths to that door, but opening it is what's required...

Hi Everyone...I notice that more and more people are visiting this website. May I know a few more of who you are? And perhaps what you are finding that brings you back? A sentence or so would do...I love getting the Friday report of how many have visited; now I am curious as to what you might be finding that brings you back.

I am here using a quote from Mark Nepo in his latest book Things That Join the Sea and Sky:

"Each day I look into the inner galaxy, tracing and mapping what I can." When I look back over the past several weeks, that's what I have been doing most of all, and it is growing and deepening with each day. Opening to and exploring the "inner galaxies" of my own soul...what better work for after the great turning past seventy? How else to leave an imprint on the world in which I perhaps won't even be a memory in twenty years?

And such needed work! The increased madness and dissolution of the world intensifies every day. Andrew Harvey says that "we live in a time of unraveling" and so it looks, increasing and intensifying with each day. Such is where we are, and denying it or avoiding it in any way is to try the impossible; i.e., escaping it. Which we can't.

Instead, the most important of practices now is to be present, to stand in full awareness of where we are in our lives and in the state of the world, and to offer the best we can offer in these transforming times; i.e. offering light and love to every person, every situation, even and especially the ones which irritate us, are cranky and dismissive, are downright frightening, and who challenge us outright. Fill that darkness with your own steady light. Amazing and surprising what it can bring about.

As 2017 draws to a close - and perhaps because of the deep freeze we have now experienced for days - I am particularly aware today of the shifting of the world unfolding right before our eyes and ears during the past year. Great Courage is needed to stay present to the realities of fake news, contrived interviews and false headlines, and by "staying present" I don't mean watching constantly and taking in detail after detail, outrage after outrage. In fact, refusing to do so - to stop watching and listening except for a few headlines now and then - is exactly the courage needed for our time so that we don't became infected and unconsciously dragged into the false beliefs shouted from our media many times a day. And so that fear and anxiety doesn't unconsciously take us over.

It is dangerous to despair. It is dangerous to believe the posturing and ignorance that dominates and masquerades as news. But - these aside - there are many positive things we can do. We can surrender to the reality and see it as an invitation to go deeper - meditating, for instance. We can form energetic intentions for good - ourselves and with others - and pour positive light into the world rather than engage in criticism and argument, both of which draw us into the darkness. And we can stay present to the reality we are asked to live through at this time in history. For more on this, see the review of a new book, Savage Grace, by Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker in Transformative Reads.

December always confronts us with deeper and deeper contrasts. While the world hovers on edge with North Korea's daily threats and Donald Trump's arrogant, self-focused stances on everything, out come all the Christmas hoopla, tired and worn and increasingly shallow and superficial. How to sustain oneself in such a world? Some ways I am discovering:

1. Don't watch the news too often. Anything major will reach you.

2. Look for positive signs of heart presence in yourself and others and dwell there.

3. Bless the negativity everywhere and then let it go, especially and immediately in yourself.

4. Seek out nature encounters - trees and dry grass and snow will do - and open to receive.

5. Search for silence - a few moments at a time. Slowly it will heal your wounds from too much noise and overload. Think of silence as a way of rest.

6. MIndfully light candles every day...