Colette Obrien

Martin Buber in his tiny jewel of a book wrote of the I/Thou Relationship he’d come to understand as a concentration camp survivor.

Somewhere in the divide between opposites is a connector, and the connector is the Self or Soul, the light of which draws all together in harmony and balance.  One finds the Self in the effort to expand consciousness; to go beyond apparent conflict to resolution that does not diminish either side but mediates.

The Self mediating conflict.

I’ve been blessed that my dog and cat are best friends.  They chase one another around the furniture, the cat jumping up to the top of things where my dog pants from below waiting for the moment he knows his friend will jump down, and they’ll wrestle on the floor leaving piles of fur but never a nick in the skin of either. 

They are my model of resolution of difference. Each is programmed to hate the other and yet, being individuals, they choose to relate not as enemies but playmates.  And I, The Self, watch delighted, in hope for the world. 

In a post last week I spoke about the goddess Nemesis who is really a friend in the guise of an enemy.  When we are able to see in such a way, the world will be renewed; mankind will achieve its true potential.

Rejection is defined as; to throw away, to refuse to take. To reject something is to attempt to exclude it from the whole.

A popular idea in modern culture is that “we’re all one”.  Assuming this to be the case, it follows that to “exclude something from the whole isn’t possible.  We can wish it wasn’t so; we can try to throw it away, but where is away? Everything that is, is.  If it isn’t possible what actually occurs when we reject?

Rejecting physical objects isn’t too problematic. I throw away garbage from my house to the recycle bin, and it’s taken away to the dump.( A great word for the place where rejected objects end up.) The objects are still part of the whole but are no longer in my house.

When I reject a person the trouble with rejection begins to show itself.  If I’m someone who’s aware of responsibility to other’s feelings, I will experience guilt with the rejection of another and that creates pressure on my mind.

The trouble is even more obvious with mental objects; ideas, beliefs, concepts.  When I reject an idea where does it go? The great dump in the sky? No, it goes to the personal unconscious. I may no longer be conscious of the idea I rejected, but because it’s still part of my psyche, it still has influence.  As with guilt, pressure occurs. We might even say that the consequence of rejection is guilt.

Every person, place, thing, idea, concept the mind has rejected causes a judgement to form which is the pressure to constantly reject that object; to keep it in its place in the unconscious.  When an object has been pushed out of the house– out of our conscious awareness–it is still part of the whole, since everything that is, is.  But like the physical dump, we can smell it. Everything rotting in that dump is perceived by the environment, and like the state of the earth today, on the verge of disastor, our individual psyche’s become unhealthy dump sights.

Acceptance has the opposite effect; the conscious mind has no pressure from an overfilled unconscious–the dump. It is open and free to observe without judgement as judgment derives from the rejected objects.

Acceptance is not a passive state but one of inclusion that, when necessary, discerns if an object is garbage and needs to go to the dump or if it can be tolerated and remain in the house. More later on acceptance.

Which side of the bed do you want to wake up on?

Wakened from the dreamworld to the rising of the sun (even if it’s behind clouds) opportunity calls like a bugle at revely.  What will this day bring, for every day is new? 

How we greet it is up to us. Do we view it  with dread that more will be asked of us than we feel capable of managing; with a sigh of boredom that this day will be like hundreds of others, a repetition of mundane activity; tired, heavy, physically unwell do we pull the covers back over our heads and wish the sun did not rise; or with hope and anticipation of adventure and exploration. 

Attitude is everything.

However, how much control do we actually have over the outlook we wake up with? The old saying, “He got up on the wrong side of the bed” has merit.  Today I woke up on the right side and greeted the day with optimism and joy, but that is not the case everyday. So what determines which side of the bed I get up on?

Health, rest, chemical balance, hormones, dreams, fears, worries, negative or positive patterns of thought  . . .   including unseen influences outside our awareness; astrology, elemental shifts in the earth, cycles of the moon, the weather . . . !!! So many things influence which side of the bed we get up on that it seems virtually impossible to name the reason or reasons for a sunny attitude versus a dark one.   

It appears we have little choice, yet though we are at the effect of so many different things, we also determine many of them ourselves, and it is to that list we must look for help to find the way to choosing our attitude.

The List:

1. Good diet, exercise, and rest. Knowing our individual chemical and hormonal balance, and monitoring changes over time. Avoiding habits that harm physical well-being.

2. Getting to know and take care of emotional needs. Saying “no” to overextending.

3. Maintaining mental fitness through stimulation; learning new things, dialogue to exchange ideas and some form of mindful practice like meditation to learn how to control thoughts. 

What we control is what we take in and what we keep out of our body/mind. 

As for the rest . . . learn to accept. Tomorrow; acceptance, what is it?

In-to-me-see. To see and be seen is the single most important psychological imperative.  Studies of infants in orphanages where they’re fed, warm and dry but not held– not seen–show that most of those infants will die. Severly abused children survive because they’re seen; the psyche doesn’t distinguish good attention from bad attention.

Do the stars care that I gaze at them in wonder?  If everything changes when it’s being observed, what does that say about the star’s recognition of the attention given by almost 7 billion humans, not to mention all the other beings that turn their attention to them each night?

Cat’s eyes light up in the darkness, like star-light they project into the void.  What do they see that we do not?

If eyes are windows into the soul, it is no wonder humans have gazed into the great eye of the sky and imagined gods and goddesses,  universal-mind, the infinite, the creator, the over-soul.

Like the cat, maybe we see many things held in that great infinite space, but without the ability to register our usual perceptions of light and form to give it meaning, we catch a glimpse and call it wonder, or awe, or mystery.

 That felt experience has made believers of humanity for millenia; believers of life outside our usual ability to perceive where the imagination and faith reign supreme and meaning beyond the mandane is found. 

Wonder

I do.

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The cultivation of peace is at the center of psychological and spiritual practices that strive for growth.  Defined by Webster as; serenity; calm; quiet; tranquility; harmony, we tend to assume that means a cessation of thought.

But if you’ve ever tried to still your mind you will have discovered you could not.  This failure causes most of us to believe something is  wrong with us. Whether it was in the middle of the night when you couldn’t sleep or in a meditation or yoga class or at  school or work when you were “supposed” to be quiet, you will have discovered the mind is NEVER still. It’s not just you; you’re not broken, but life can best be described as a state of perpetual motion. Physics has proven that all matter is in motion, and though we’re unable to see a rock moving, we now know that it is.

So if peace isn’t an absence of thought, what is it? The answer to discovering a peaceful state is in the last word of the dictionary definition; harmony which is an absence of conflict. Since I cannot stop my mind from thinking, and would not wish to for it would mean I was no longer alive, my thinking must become harmonious.

A mindful practice is one in which one watches their thoughts. Have you ever just watched and not been drawn in? If drawn in you will discover tension as at the heart of most of our thinking whether it’s problem solving, worrying, regretting, etc. In other words; most thinking is conflictual by nature. Does that mean harmonious thinking is not possible?

Not at all, just unusual. When we’re able to watch our thoughts without being drawn in to the conflict, harmony is the result.  Accept everything, reject nothing, and the mind is at peace.