We have a while before Easter is upon us, but here is my preamble for it this go around. It’s an odd mixture of serious and humorous, ironic and dry. More will be revealed. Lots of quotes and references will be only partly attributed.
Earliest attribution I found to this ‘misery’ quote.
IN RE the Bob Marley Quote, "The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.": Everyone is worth feeling pain over, but suffering/misery is optional. Pain & suffering are just words; interchangeable words, as are the words ‘guilt’ & ‘shame’. People bicker about silly things. If you do or don’t like anything I say, credit or blame God. God is the only reason I’ve survived this long.
The gravity of our addiction to judgment can clutch us, almost like a Black Hole, where even light itself finds itself captured. If we go through the Black Hole willingly, we get squeezed, birthed, and plop out a new person on the other side, slathered with primordial ooze and blood. It ain’t easy, but it’s worth it. Simple, not easy. Let Go Let God.
If that seems too daunting for rebirth, I get it. Try the softer, easier way. Be angry, fine, but don't let anger’s aligning plots swallow your spirit. Say NO! Anger can fuel wrongdoing; becoming the person you are mad at (or worse) may result in hating the hater. Deal with anger before it becomes rage, and it deals with you. Problems caught while they are still small are usually quite manageable. Let that stuff go, lest at night you lay your head upon your pillow with an unquiet mind. Anger is the dubious luxury of normal people, but for some among our ranks, it is fatal. Restlessness, irritability, and discontentedness foreshadow relative proximity to that Black Hole. But I’ve found in life that if you run from it, and avoid your Dark Night of the Soul, it will come around again. You’re orbiting the thing in ever concentric oblong circles. Most of our problems share the same center or axis point: Death…and New Life. If you have not learned to see the beauty in pain, life will refund your misery (and multiply it, too). It’s all up to you, though.
If you’ve read the Big Book, you’ll get the following, maybe.
Twists and Turns of Human Nature.
"Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations." (Big Book pg 64).
The Big Book also reads at least twice that "...our troubles are of our own making...".
We begin veering off course when we get this backward by saying "our troubles are of others' making."
As I heard Mark L. describe Alcoholics, Addicts, and Codependents in a Hazelden Alumni event:
An Alcoholic is someone that crashes their car into an oak tree and afterward says, "I gotta quit...driving.
An Addict crashes into an oak tree, and gets out of the car laughing, saying, HA! It wasn't MY car!
A Codependent crashes into this same tree, and a few hours later is back with a chainsaw cutting the tree down, saying, "It's YOUR fault!"
Anger, oh, anger, for where art thou, anger? IF anger erupts from our hearts, whether aloud or a silent explosion, THEN we risk a self-imposed abyss swallowing us whole, body, mind & soul. I wonder if Jonah and the Whale came into your mind as it did mine? Hmmm…
We built pedestals in hell. We blamed someone else for the fire that we ourselves stoked. We lived close to that fire, sweat pouring from our brows in the furnace of our self-undoing, like an eternal run-on sentence.
Resentments and anger can fester and generate pollution that perpetually creates freight trains of misfortune in its logical course. We generate fear in and around us, fashioning our existence through free will. Do you remember that the door to hell is opened only from the inside?
"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." Bob Marley
There is a way out of this bubble. Who will have time to trip on pain, suffering, guilt, and shame if we are busy loving God and others as we love ourselves? Let's quit playing the self-sabotage and blame the other guy for the victim-mentality thing.
In Aikido, one guiding principle is to work on seeing things from the other person's point of view. 'The customer is always right' addresses this paradigm. This choice, an attitude, helps one avoid merging with the seeming problems of life and at least allow breathing room to not exacerbate the glitches in the matrix.
Bob Marley still affects us today, as do many other excellent role models that we fondly quote. These role models had shortcomings. Who among us is perfect to cast the first stone? But we become ‘Quoters’ of those who have risen above severe life challenges, even to the point of resurrection. Check out the following Slide Show (I hope you laugh a little):
Focus on solutions, but don’t force solutions; don’t quit before the miracle happens. Keep plugging away until 'accepting life on life's terms' becomes your mantra. Having a profound alteration in our reaction to life is a bold way of living. When a problem arises in life, have a long series of automated responses (response-ability) to select from and utilize. This habit is acquired, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, but repetition as the Mother of All Learning eventually morphs the entirety of our spiritual experiences into One spiritual awareness. There is One who has all power. That One is God. May you find God now.
Written by Gerald May
The Universe sings One Song and is as patient as Eternity. The Universe is conspiring to give us the best life possible at all times and in all places. Happiness is a choice, and peace defies reason.
“ “If you care enough, you’ll find a way.””
Few people place a candle in its holder, light the candle, then carry it outside, in broad daylight, then set it down, and walk away. The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win. “To light a candle is to cast a shadow...” is an assumption that candles are only lit when it is dark. That's part of our real issue in society today.
Someone recently asked a question on a chess page while showing a chessboard position, saying that it was a foregone conclusion that black would lose the queen, and I answered that they were mistaken. I was taken to task for two days over my answer. I proved that black didn't have to lose the Queen. No matter what moves were illustrated against my contention, it stood true. Black would lose the game in two moves if black did what I suggested, but black lost the game...WITHOUT losing the Queen. People change the question or try to, and then gaslight those who are not fallible in their reasoning along the lines of the question at hand. Go Focus Yourself.