Category Archives: Intentions, Musings

here is whre there are suggestions for ways of getting in touch with what matters

A Quieter Life for Wendell Berry

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A Quieter Life Now

In an exchange of letters with a dear friend, Wendell Berry explains why his writing is only a small part of the movement against greed and waste.
 by Wendell Berry, Madhu Suri Prakash
posted Jun 29, 2011

YES! contributing editor Madhu Suri Prakash is a longtime friend of poet, essayist, novelist, activist, and farmer Wendell Berry. Inspired by changing attitudes among her college students, who were reading Berry, Madhu declared the Wendell Berry Era, and wrote to him, proposing that he write an open letter to President Obama calling for funding to establish new small farms. This correspondence ensued.

Dear Wendell,

Madhu Suri Prakash

Madhu Suri Prakash.

I have a dream; and, at its center, you stand—tall, humble, simply magnificent.
Despite all my reservations about writing to you, here I am, hours before dawn, doing something I could not even have dared to imagine only last evening.

I awoke with a dream long before the sun is scheduled to shine. In this dream, I join millions reading your open letter to the White House, courteously requesting $5 billion—a tiny pittance compared to the going rate for government bailouts—to regenerate 50 million family farms; $5 billion, in other words, that could support young people who have the gumption and sense of adventure necessary to grow food and sequester carbon in the soil; $5 billion that would allow American women, men, and their families a chance to eat and grow clean, uncontaminated, uncancerous food.

Your moral stature and vision are such that all you would have to do is write such an open letter to the president to more fully awaken millions; to start a groundswell.

My dream declared itself loud and clear as soon as I rolled out of bed—perhaps the time is right. It’s been a long time coming, Wendell. Your half-century-old patience, my dream declares, may finally be paying off. Your time, the Wendell Berry Era, has finally dawned. Hopefully.

to read more and see Wendell Berry’s reply, go to::    http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/beyond-prisons/a-quieter-life-now

 

Intend Your Day

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Each morning, as you lie in bed before getting up or after getting up, take a moment just to think of what would make this day true and rewarding for you.  Intend your day to bring you fulfillment.  Just a few examples: If you are going to be meeting with a friend, intend that that meeting will be joyous and fruitful for you.  If you are working on   some negotiation, intend that the outcome will be positive.  If it is a day of rest, intend that you will find in the freedom of the day new knowledge and certainty.

Intention: Positively directed intention creates for me joy and fulfillment.

 

Hands to Heart Center

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Hands to Heart Center:    There are times when we are feeling stressed or overwhelmed in our daily lives.  This is a time to stop, stand firmly on your two feet, take a deep breath, and bring your hands to your heart center with palms together or cross your hands, one on top of the other.  Take a moment to feel your heart, to listen to your heart, to be with yourself.  Connect with the energies of the Earth and the Universe and feel the light all around.  As you connect with all things, you can see the true meaning and importance of WHO you are.  You can accomplish anything as long as you stand firm in WHO you are and act from your heart.  You will find more clarity and better perspective.  While you are firm within your heart, take a moment to look at your priorities.  Then breathe deeply and move on with your day.

INTENTION: By connecting with my heart, I find my inner power.

 

Own Your Power

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Torment and Giving In:     When the energies of all that is around us begin to swirl in confused ways, as new energies enter and vortex centers shift, we find ourselves lost in confusion.  There are many possible responses to this confusion.  The most common one is to fall into fear.   And when you fall into fear, then we are most easily convinced to do things that we would not, in our general centered consciousness do. This is a time to take a look at what is truly important to you and to go for that.  You are not powerless.  You have recourse.  It is a time for a shift in focus.  Look elsewhere, change your thoughts, change your mind.  Fear is a conditioned and easy response, so if you just allow yourself temporarily  to shift your focus, you can get more perspective.  Give in to the heart knowledge that is inside.

INTENTION: I am stronger than my fears.  I create the reality I desire.

Time for a Change

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It is time for a change! But change does not have to be drastic.  Big shifts and renovations can start with changing one little thing.  Take a look at the room you are in.  Everything has its place.  It is time to take one item and move it to a different place.  Then walk out of the room and back in again.  Take a look around.  Everything is different! By changing one little element, you have changed the whole room.  And a change of one small thing can be the stepping off point for major shifts, realignments, and new perspectives.

INTENTION: By doing one thing, I make a difference in everything;.

fr/Burnt Norton by T.S. Eliot

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FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. ELIOT

QUARTET #1—BURNT NORTON

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

to read the complete poem, go to:    http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/

“The Second Coming” W.B. Yeats

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One of my favorite poems:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 


Take A Breather

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Things are hectic and crazy these days.  There seems little prospect of this changing.  Our job is to deal, to cope, perhaps even to overcome.  In order to do this, we need to be in contact with WHO we are as much as possible.

The good thing about being in contact with our WHO is that we have a sense of our own worth and our own power. What we choose to so with that is our own stuff.

Under any circumstances, there is no judgement here. Rather, I am offering a suggestion for a way to make through the day with a little less stress.  It is an easy method, but as we learn from reading Taoism, the small stuff is generally the hardest.  We are conditioned to complicate.  To find reasons, to find motives to make observations.  What if you just needed one.  Hmm, not very… democratic?

Well, enough of that.  I have a small exercise (no huffing and puffing required) that, if used on a daily basis, can bring a bit of peace into the day.

Take a minute out of every hour of the day to center.  (If you are awake fourteen hours, that is fourteen minutes.  Not bad.) Just put everything down.  Close your eyes or perhaps focus your eyes on a peaceful picture.  Take two deep breaths.  See all the stuff just rolling off of you.  It can puddle at your feet.  You can send down into whatever is below you.  Feel how great it is to let things go for a bit. Watch it as it goes.  Then see a great white, shining light come down and flow through your body.  Renewing your energy.  Re-establishing WHO you are in your core self.  When it has fully engulfed you, go to your heart center, take two deep breaths. Add a bit of gratitude, a Namaste, whatever, and come back to where you were.

The end.  A one minute vacation to the center of it all.

What is done, is done!

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Now, more than ever, it is time to put behind you everything of the past.  Dwelling on things that have a life in the past does not help you in dealing with new energies and vibrations that are coming your way.  Things are speeding up on all levels.  You must be alert, open, allowing, and letting go all at the same time.  To hold onto old thoughts, habits, people., things, etc. that are in your life just because they are in your life will no longer work.  Choose what it is you love, and break down your attachments to all the rest.  You must learn to see those things as obstacles to the unfoldment of WHO you are.

INTENTION: I recognize the past and put it behind me.  I live in the Now.

 

Your Focus Muscle

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Things today can get pretty crazy, however if you are grounded and focused, you can actually accomplish quite a lot.  Focus is the key to many things these days.  In Taoism, Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism, they speak of a single-minded focus.  Single-minded focus, in itself, is somewhat difficult to achieve, but, with practice, you can find yourself able to center in on your desire without falling into all the myriad distractions that are always out there vying for attention.

To gain focus, I have developed an easy and relatively quick exercise for your ‘Focus Muscle’.  Think of a particular intention, item, or goal you are wishing to achieve or create.  Around that item, as you think of it, there will be other things popping up their heads and asking for their own bit of attention.  Rather than trying to negate these or otherwise ignore them — mainly because, you know that never works, rather it has just the opposite result and that is to bring that item to the forefront — what you need to do is to engage your internal spotlight.

Take a moment and just have a sense of what a spotlight is and what it does. Basically a spotlight is a really, really bright light that is used to show up what is most important in a given scene.  So, go within and just imagine a spotlight.  Play with it for a bit, and get an idea of how it works.  Once you are in control of that internal spotlight, it is time to put it to work.  Think of what it is that you are wishing to create in your life.  As you do, you will see those sneaky little distractions beginning to sneak up into the foreground.  This is the time to use your focus muscle and turn that spotlight on.  Send the beam of light to your true intention.  All the other stuff will disappear into the background, as your desire moves to the forefront.   There in the light is the thing that you are wanting to bring into your life.

This does not mean that the distractions are totally gone or that they have ceased, rather it is a way of acknowledging go to yourself that what is truly important is the intention that is having light shone upon it.  This need not be a long practice or particularly laborious.  Start with short intervals, and with time, you will discover that your “focus muscle” is much stronger, and little by little your real intentions take center stage.