Update about blog

Some color near Durango CO
Showing posts with label wonderment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wonderment. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Considering the state of the world, and ourselves in it

 Some good things to consider from fellow blogger, Interim Arrangements...

There is hardly a group that has as much influence on world history as the indifferent. And the remarkable thing is that nobody speaks of them. Their passivity has made the most radical upheavals possible. The indifferent accept everything as it comes. They are neither in favour nor against.

The indifferent are almost more dangerous than  ideologues because they are difficult to predict and just as difficult to track down when they disappear after a disaster they have caused.  It is often said that the indifferent make it easy for themselves by looking the other way when things become inhumane and then playing the innocent lamb afterwards. But as an indifferent, you have to make an extreme effort to repress and fight against all the humanity within you that has not yet died off.

Being committed is not synonymous with a dangerous, pleasureless life, quite the opposite. It is a dynamic life in which boredom has no place, the brain is always active and the antennae become sensitive to a better future, which helps not to destroy the present, the mother of the future. We all know those moments when we want to say: As an individual you can't do anything anyway, and anyway I can't see through it any more...?! These are excuses. Of course the situation is confusing, and anyone who gets involved can also fail. But this risk,  is simply part of it.

Rafik Shami


and...

If we save the world, a big old hypothetical ‘if’, what was the reason that we did that? If we did it because of fear, what happens when the fear is gone? But if we save the world because of wonder, wonder persists after the danger is gone. We’ll be more likely to protect future generations again and again afterwards.

Dara McAnulty

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She had more quotes, her link is above in the blog name.


my comment to her was:

 I feel that we need the energy to rise soon, as it did with the Women's Marches...not after the fact, but as an effort of awakening. Protesting is so easy, but now imagining what we must avoid is the work at hand.

This is a step along what Robert Reich said in my post yesterday, as well as an extension of my thoughts from H. Byron Ballard's suggestions in my New Year's Day post.

in St. Petersburg FL



Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Gratitude, depression, and wonderment

Reposting this description of a meditation. I was feeling depressed, and certainly not liking myself today (note, some weeks agao)..so looked for past uses of gratitude. Thinking I wouldn't have to rewrite my gratitude list, which usually helps me get out of depression. So I think I'll try this meditation from Jan 4, '21...it's nice and slow and doesn't require much effort...

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I was not following any guidance when meditating the other day...just had some background music going. Looking out the window at the fog as it lifted, first only being able to see the top of a power pole at Hwy. 70, then slowly having the ridge line of the mountain appear. The fog remained in the middle between these two points, a valley full of cloud. Somewhere down there the little Swannanoa River wanders back and forth through the valley that carries its name.

Some days my meditation just comes to me. Today, gratitude was top of my list.

Often meditation starts with deep breaths. And then awareness of parts of the body...starting with the feet, legs and going up each part. But today I started with my heart, then lungs. And from there I focused on each of the systems of my body...muscles, nerves, skin etc. I almost forgot the digestive and kidneys/bladder systems. I did remember hair and finger nails.  

Anyway, it was good to be grateful for all the wonderful pieces that make up this pie called Barbara. What amazing things homo sapiens are.


My winter-time view of the mountains.


And the summertime view out my living room windows.


Today's quote:

Moving in the flow of compassion and deepening enquiry,
we engage with all beings in ways that support the integrity,
the stability and the beauty of the entire living world.

Engaging with this [flow] of birthing/dying living,
embracing it, surrendering to it, [we find that] the mystery
is tremendously integrated.
It is extraordinarily stable.  It has been in action for
billions of years.  It is breath-stoppingly beautiful in
all its vulnerability...

My medicine is wonderment...

Tarchin Hearn