What can we do to help us all learn and move on?

[Paul Roberts]

Excerpts from Meg's post:

...Enron, Arthur Andersen, Nortel, Royal Bank of Canada being sued by
Robobank of Holland... and now Worldcom. Is there a pattern here?

really thinking that we/ they could get away with it...

And what about "us"...

Greed and attachment may be human failings, but enough is enough already!

SO, I wonder if we're at a turning point here?

What can we do to help us all learn and move on, to help the spiral turn...
in healthy fashion?

I would really appreciate any other ideas, what other folks are doing, your
thoughts on the matter.

...with a frown and a smile!

=====================================================================

The first 20 years of my life created a pattern of judgement for for me
that I have spent the next 30 years learning to unlearn.

As I have continued to zig and zag on the path, I have become more aware of
my own tendencies towards judgement...transferred from my family system to
my various adult social systems...especially those relating to the work
world.

For me, finding my essential stance remains my first priority, even more so
when there is a "falling apart".  It is, at the same time, both the
simplest and the hardest thing for me to do.

When I find my way back to that place, I find answers come to the questions
Meg poses here...questions I have posed many times myself.  In that place,
my thoughts and actions align, and my interactions with the larger systems
in which I live become clarified...again...and again...and again.

Particularly in times of piercing the veil entirely, when the entire shelf
of ego-self has dropped away, even for short periods of time, my
perceptions have radically altered:  difference has been replaced by "no
difference", judgement by radical acceptance, conditional love by
unconditional love.  Those moments have provided me the ability to begin
again:  to find, to understand, to articulate, and to move from what I am
calling here "essential stance".

Words have been powerful tools of remembrance for me.  Here are two poems,
one ancient, one modern, that speak to me about a certain kind of radical
acceptance that help me remember, so I can "go home" spiritually,
cognitively and emotionally.  Here, and only here, is the open space I need
to think and act clearly in times of crisis.

Best,
Paul Roberts


Tao Te Ching #28 (Lao Tzu tr. Mitchell)

Know the male,
yet keep to the female:
receive the world in your arms.

If you receive the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you will be like a little child.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a pattern for the world.

If you are a pattern for the world,
the Tao will be strong inside you
and there will be nothing you can't do.

Know the personal,
yet keep to the impersonal:
accept the world as it is.

If you accept the world,
the Tao will be luminous inside you
and you will return to your primal self.

The world is formed from the void,
like utensils from a block of wood.

The Master knows the utensils,
yet keeps to the the block:
thus she can use all things.




Please Call Me by My True Names
Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow--even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply:
every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive,
in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart
is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda,
all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring,
so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open,
the door of compassion.

*
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