I got home at nearly 1am only to discover I did not ahve my house keys. Lovely evening with friends. Greta food. Laughs and good company. Got to see ML's new place too - really cosy. Intelligent conversations.
Windy journey home and gettng low on petrol!! And no flipping keys. Tried phoning ML and other friends to see if they had them but no answer - all tucked up asleep. Well actually I later discovered ML was watching
a film with her headsets on.
I sent a text to RB to see if by chance sehe was till up. Hallelujah! And even better GB was awake so would know where my set of keys were. Phew.
Guess what? As I put on my jeans this morning to walk LL, there was rattling in my pocket. Lord! The flipping keys were tehre all the time. Am I really going senile ha ha ha ha ha ha. AB has had a very good laugh this monring, having slept through all the comotion at her place int eh early hours.
A few texts with JH. Up late - made me smile. I felt a twinge of jealousy and able to back off. My jealousy can easily become controlling I think. Anyway I did express my concern. Resorting to online stuff to escape from these very very difficult times he is going through. I suspect he is hurting so deeply inside. But of course it's difficult to step aside from that and allow the feelings to be and get through them. Most people lets face it find ways of not feeling. Centuries of dysfuntioning our very God given senses. Of course there is nothing wrong with anyone's choices of behaviour if taking responsibility. There are always consequences to everythign we do but what I want is to be more aware so that the damage is not the greatest part. And when taking a thorough and honest look at things I get a feel that JH's online stuff has had consequences on his connections that have truly mattered. He seems in search of something and finding it in bursts. Maybe that is it. I realised that I have had a lifetime of relationships and not a lifetime's relationship. Maybe this is now JH's journey. I am not sure to make of my lessons right now in this realisation. What I can see is that there is a "wrong" motivation in it for me. I have been looking to be loved. And still need to find the love within me. It is improved but still not wholesome.
I was very very pleased to be oving to myself in the early hours. Weird really. As I got in and still a few texts with JH I received a text from CY. I had to turn off my phone in the end. His texts were very out of character. Whereas before it was not always respectful - although talking about music is always just that - this was odd. At one point I wondered if his phone had been stolen. When I turned on my ohone this moring he had sent a few more texts and tried calling. I was concerned actually. Then he called again this morning. He said he felt embarrassed about his texts. He is another man who wants to have something but not to have things all above board and honest. I repeated to him that I am not interested in any relationship with him other than being friendly and that I enjoy the discussions about other matters but if that was too difficult to maintain then we could stop. He tried once more. I said kindly I think NO.
I reallised how throughout my life I have said yes just so that I don't lose the person. Well I do realise that I want to base friendship on valuing people and not being disrespectful.
I am worth it!
No one likes pain (and it comes in so many forms - I see it in everyday work and everyday people) and society has developed more and more ways to put things out of balance. I always remember the Dalai Llama saying that he strives to keep everything in balance and in that way he has peace with the world. Happiness included. I know when I first heard him I did not truly comprehend. But in these last years I have a better understanding. And now its practice. But I am so new at it I get off kilter without even noticing it. But I am more aware that's the point. Just keep increasing the awareness. If only I had followed the insight I had as a child. But it was too difficult when surrounded by others already escaping and teaching that that was the right way. This society wants to suppress difficulty. Too much making things look OK and not enough allowing yni and yang, good and bad, black and white. Working through things is the solution. Not blocking them off at the beginning because then it has to accumulate and fester somewhere else.
I hope Universe for more people to make changes so that future generations can take advantage of advances but also be more aware of their humanness - intuition, senses, serenity, etc.
It's as if the all knowingness had to de-generate to re-generate. Lose it to know it's worth maybe??
I was reading EVE by Christina Rosetti yesterday. And it really brought me to think abdout the story of Adam and Even in the Bible. For me the stories are parables. Ways of trying to make sense for uneducated and becoming educated minds of all those years ago. So tryng to make the limitless more sensical by making it human. I also think by the way that it's a way of justifyig battles!! Anyway Eve
"While I sit at the door
Sick to gaze within
Mine eye weepeth sore
For sorrow and sin:
As a tree my sin stands
To darken all lands;
Death is the fruit it bore.
"How have Eden bowers grown
Without Adam to bend them!
How have Eden flowers blown
Squandering their sweet breath
Without me to tend them!
The Tree of Life was ours,
Tree twelvefold-fruited,
Most lofty tree that flowers,
Most deeply rooted:
I chose the tree of death.
"Hadst thou but said me nay,
Adam, my brother,
I might have pined away;
I, but none other:
God might have let thee s tay
Safe in our garden,
By putting me away
Beyond all pardon.
"I, Eve, sad mother
Of all who must live,
I, not another,
Plucked bitterest fruit to give
My friend, husband, lover;—
O wanton eyes, run over;
Who but I should grieve?—
Cain hath slain his brother:
Of all who must die mother,
Miserable Eve!"
Thus she sat weeping,
Thus Eve our mother,
Where one lay sleeping
Slain by his brother.
Greatest and least
Each piteous beast
To hear her voice
Forgot his joys
And set aside his feast.
The mouse paused in his walk
And dropped his wheaten stalk;
Grave cattle wagged their heads
In rumination;
The eagle gave a cry
From his cloud station;
Larks on thyme beds
Forbore to mount or sing;
Bees drooped upon the wing;
The raven perched on high
Forgot his ration;
The conies in their rock,
A feeble nation,
Quaked sympathetical;
The mocking-bird left off to mock;
Huge camels knelt as if
In deprecation;
The kind hart's tears were falling;
Chattered the wistful stork;
Dove-voices with a dying fall
Cooed desolation
Answering grief by grief.
Only the serpent in the dust
Wriggling and crawling,
Grinned an evil grin and thrust
His tongue out with its fork.
Overall, I read this and read quite a gloomy outlook. And if course it very easily indicates the story of Adam and Eve. But what I realised is that this appies to everyday life and decisions.
Contemplating all the choices we can make it is quite disheartening at times to realise the number of times I (people) make choices according to temptation rather than to the greater good. I like the prayer quoted in Step Three
God, I offer myself to thee - to bild with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always.
"relive me of the bondage of self" - how I treasure those lines but how I froget them so quickly. This does not mean as I always used to that I put myself on the bottome of the pile. Which of course is the ultimate in sacrifice. But I am not holy. I see Sister N put herself at the very bottome. All these years taken away from her home. She sacrificed that to serve her heart's desire to serve God. I am not able to be that holy. But I do believe service comes in many forms. The difficulty is knowing God's will. And the problem comes with temptation - hence the Devil. In the story of Adam and Eve, the snake to awaken an awareness of other things. What's wrong with the other things, the forbidden fruit? Perhaps nothing at all. But Adam and Eve were innocent and no self awareness, they had never had to exercise constraint and thoughtfulness and consideration and respect and so on. They had had no need. Like children they were shameless of their nakedness. Why would they be any different, there was nothing to be ashamed of. But with time they became sexually aware.
And in their awareness of their sexuality, suddenly there was a shame. But isn't this also because no one was there to guide them to just be OK with themselves. It's as if the sexuality was a shameful thing simply because it's so secretive. I don't quite know how to express this. What does Christina say?
She talks about sad Eve is that she was the one to tempt Adam to take the fruit. But actually didn't the snake promote it with a different and seductive slant. Rather than it being very natural development for Eve to want to bear a child. The snake had sold the idea differently. So Eve took on the guilt of the World. She was the temptress and she sat contemplating the results of her action. She had not considered the implications before doing what she did and here she now sits with the blood of her slain son on her hands - Cain killed Able - but wasn't this the next lesson in emotions driving behaviour. More lack of self awareness.
So in this poem, Christina is telling me how Eve takes full responsibility but shows me how different emotions drive us. She does not talk about Adam's choice to also follow temptation. How when everything
is OK there is a devil to want to sabotage everything good.
We humans need to become aware of all these emotions and it seems to me the Bible tells these stories of emotional evolution through the ages and there are amazing lessons we can learn from the writings.
However, they are not the only source. Each belief system I think has been trying to do the same.
Anyway the point of the poem to me is clear.
Emotions, emotions, emotions - e - motion = energy in motion. The energy within us creates motion or motivation to behave. We are responsible for what we do and need to be able to consider the impact on others although we are not responsible for their emotions and how they respond to themselves.
There. lots of words saying nothing really.
Thank you Christina. Thank you Bible writer of the story of Adam and Eve.
Rob Anderson
Awakening - by me
Contemplating the speed of years past,
My blind dash through time.
Complicating and compensating
Humanities daily trials.
Hasty, near decisions;
Beguiled, seduced far from sanity.
Choices. Escaping.
Winding the trail of the long, weary path,
Scattered with gloriously, scented rose petals,
Blood red ones
Littered with dead ones.
Angry voices and loving tones,
Gently watching for my despair
When reality settles.
Frozen. Obliterating.
In the stillness of reality and thought
Consequences no longer chasing,
the hearse overtaking
An undertaker smiles.
Consideration in time
What's mine to charge.
Deliver me from temptation,
Exist in rhythm with creation
Changes. Growing.
Bliss
XX
