By Don Arnoudse
Bio
Procrastination
Jose Ortega Y Gasset said, “The most compelling thing about life is its immediacy. It is fired at us point blank”. I think that says a lot for why we need to learn to live in the moment and not become trapped in our internal conversations about this and that, forever chasing the future that never arrives or dragging the past forward like a yoke….
We live too much of our lives in our head, wishing and wanting things to happen later and regretting and resenting what is already gone … and
Grown Ups
AARP Magazine’s editor did an interesting video interviewing folks on the question of what a grown up is. It was interesting to hear the diverse viewpoints on this concept, and to discover how little agreement there is about what constitutes ‘being grown up’. Everyone seems to have a different point of view about what the words mean. The conversations we have about ‘acting our
Love
I have a painting of two hearts touching, surrounded by golden light, in a kind of surrealistic rendering. I take it to be a portrayal of Love. Beneath the picture are the words, “I now seek only what I must lose”. It speaks to me of the inevitable, of the fact that we must all sooner or later ‘let go’ of whatever we may be attached to, including the people and things we cherish most.
The Buddha’s message was directly to this point: the true nature of life is love and letting go, or
Surrender or Succumb
One of the toughest lessons we learn in life is that ‘reality’ doesn’t care what we think or how we feel. Reality is just ‘what is’—the permanent state of ‘isness’. This isn’t a philosophical idea. It is one of those ‘obvious’ aspects of consciousness and existence that is true no matter what we believe, a kind of a priori truth such as ‘all bachelors are unmarried’. This idea about “reality just being what is” is tough to get because we spend most of our lives thinking
Compassion and Growth
By Shae Hadden
Bio
I was struck by the sweet irony of life.
In
the midst of this season of new beginnings, some of my older women
friends are facing mid-life and end-of-life challenges. Seasons ago,
they ‘planted’ themselves in particular locations, lifestyles and ways
of thinking about things. And now the challenges they face are like
none they have experienced before. In a way, they are being offered
opportunities to let go, to ‘re-plant’ themselves,
Mother
In loving memory of my mother, Ruth Selman (1920-2007), who passed away this morning at 11:20 am.
I am distracted by thoughts of dying, My actions blown away on wasted winds of imagination and thoughts I cannot think or speak.I celebrate tomorrow and yearn for yesterdays,
The weakness of a restless soul longing for realities unlived and lost forever in the desert of forgotten dreams.I am longing to disappear in a transcendent moment,
Able to relate in a comforting embrace and forget the lost moments of unexperienced possibilities and unconsummated potential.I am too many people in too many times,
Filled with the pain of seeking what cannot be sought and hoping for resolution of unasked questions that have no answers.I have circumnavigated the Universe eight times and seven,
Being both lighthearted and a dark cloud without reason, knowing only that I AM and always will be searching, without sleep or time to rest.I am movement itself, without form or fashion, direction or goal,
Forever trapped in this prison of time and space, physical without form and spiritual without Being or power beyond myself.I am beyond mere words—a silence embracing the absence of sound.
Rebirth isn’t possible when we cannot die or find an ending to the process we began so long ago—before we knew the cost of time.I am Yesterday, Tomorrow and Forever, surrounding both life and death,
Now cannot be me, but it is all there is, and therefore I am not and never was—until someone finds me waiting for them for all eternity.The Promise of Networking
Do you remember when networks of computers first arrived on the scene? Moving information onto the new technological platform decentralized and dispersed information and knowledge, a move that resulted in a significant communications revolution that still has repercussions today. Giving people the ability to access and share what had previously existed only on paper or in the minds of certain individuals not only sped up the rate of transactions, but also freed individuals from a certain amount
Technology & Transformation
We’re all connected-whether we like it or not. We have seen our world through the eyes of astronauts, and there is no going back. Globalization is as much a product of space flights, satellites, air transportation, and the telephone as it is a product of our (relatively recent) capacity to communicate and coordinate our actions at long distances using technology. It really is just one world.
Online shopping is slowly creeping up on us, with eBay and Amazon the main competitors. 5 years ago,
Building Bridges
I was listening to an interview on CBC’s wonderful Sunday program called "Our World”. They were speaking with Charles Taylor, a 76-year-old Canadian philosopher and political activist who was recently awarded the Templeton Prize to research how spiritual aspirations shape society and politics. In this interview, he came across as one of the most optimistic commentators on the state of the world I’ve heard and he was positive without being unrealistic or naïve.
The essence of his message