#599 Alive with Potential

     The boundary between wallowing / self-indulgence / complacency / self-acceptance / idealism / spiritual practice / enlightenment tends to be dynamic, moving, evolving. When open to it, we get a felt sense of outgrowing younger needs & ways of being, which loose their appeal as our requirements evolve to become progressively more sophisticated, mature human beings.

     The motivation to keep growing, evolving varies between individuals & within the same person at different phases of life, from nonexistent to urgent priority.

     One can’t successfully evolve too fast (eg "spiritual bypassing") since such “striving” binds us to “ordinary mind”. Rushing to acquire a goal ties us down to the same primitive (brain stem) level of consciousness that cause problems in the first place.
     Nor can we successfully stagnate in complacency – besides the dullness factor, our biological clock is ticking away. 

     Awareness of our mind-heart-body tells us what we need to physically process right now. Awareness of actual awareness tells us that, right now, we are clarity, peace, silence, stillness, joy.

     We have the mysteriously incredible gift of life … can we share our blessings with so many who suffer?

 

Angela Classen   www.angelaclassen.com

#552 The Greatest Risk of All

     "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."          John F. Kennedy

     I'll never forget the video clip I saw on TV of an old donkey that labored all its life drawing water from a well, by walking in a circle, pushing a long pole. When it was old and spent, they untied the donkey. What did it do? It kept walking in a circle.
     In large poultry operations, chickens are kept their entire lives in a tiny cage, laying eggs or rapidly fattening-up for slaughter. Quality of life - for chickens, farm workers, & consumers - is efficiently minimized to maximize rapid profit. Most of us, much like the chickens, don't know & don't care. Work, eat, sleep, die - comfortable inaction of "a life unexamined".

     There are healthy alternatives! We can intentionally become more aware, more conscious - buy free-range chicken, free-range eggs, we can become vegetarian, we can become vegan. We do NOT have to go along with every dysfunctional consumer trend like zombies!

     "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."          Henry David Thoreau
 
     While it's very easy to become "comfortably numb" from routine work, especially in a consumer society, our quality of life depends on our creativity & other aspects of our evolving consciousness. We don't have to physically go elsewhere, but do have to WAKE UP!
     We can & must live an "undivided life" - from our deepest core values. Nothing else is worth our life!