No Kings 3

I had a friend yesterday say she restarted writing gratitudes after talking to me and then sent the 5 from her day and asked for comments.  After reading hers I realized that my rule that my gratitudes be unique not only helps me be more specific, and be a better writer, but it also forces the gratitudes beyond the superficial. To say "I am grateful for the sunrise" or "grateful for my family". Ok maybe. But are you even paying attention to your family?  Because if you are paying attention you can find something specific to be grateful for about them. 

 Today was No Kings 3 and I was grateful that when I mentioned it to a family member, she said she wanted to go. I don't enjoy going to rallies alone and it was nice to not have to recruit someone. We also both had similar preferences.  We both wanted to wait to cross the bridge when it was packed with people. I thought we might have to wait a while to get on the bus, but we got on easily and they added a bunch so also did on the way back.

I've been to much smaller protests where I couldn't hear anything, so that is what I expected today, but the sound system was impressive and I heard it all, including Bruce Springsteen's original song which was my highlight.

Reading creative signs is also always a highlight. Many are confrontational.  I appreciate the humorous ones.  I think my two favorite today were - "Never been prouder of my neighbors" and

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Anne Frank

Tolle Quote of the Day

 "When you talk in The New Earth about the flowering of consciousness.  How strongly do you feel that movement happening around the world? Do you witness it? Do you see it?" Sir Ken Robinson

"Yes, it's definitely happening, whether it is happening fast enough to prevent a collapse of the civilization, whether that is even desirable that the civilization should not collapse, I don't know. It may have to collapse. But definitely there is an awakening. The strange thing is I can almost tell you, by looking at any human being in the street, who is already beginning to go thru the awakening process and who is not yet. I'm not always right, but a lot of the time I can tell, just by looking at a human, just for a few seconds. Because there is a light that comes thru, that isn't there in those humans who are still totally trapped in their conceptual mind. And that's the awakening. The disidentification from the conceptual mind and the arising of presence. It's happening on a much larger scale than ever, for the first time on a large scale. It still of course, is a minority of the total population of the planet. Definitely. It's even a minority in the Western countries. I cannot even tell you what the percentage is of, like say, in North America or in Western Europe who are going thru the awakening process. But my intuitive guess is something like..." (and here I thought Eckhart was going to say less than 1%) "...20%, which is quite a lot of people."

Who am I? (in a 5 minute write)

Who am I?

A being of light, a traveler, an agent of peace, a confused and lost soul, a worry, an embrace. I am gleaming, a gift, a guffaw, a melting away. I am the opening and closing of time, a postcard forgotten to send in the mail. Rumi says, “I am all orders of being, infinite galaxies” did he say the milky way? I know his poem ends, “Say who I am. Say I am you.” I am an occasional memorizer of poetry, a recreational soccer player, an outdoors lover. I am a human in a body and a soul in the world. I am spinning and lost. I am found in the sunset and sunrise. I am connected and alone. Interwoven and unfrayed. I am blue ink upon a notebook page, and the pen encasing it and writing. I am the paper that came from life cut down to create. I am not afraid to have fluid and expansive definitions. I am concerned we are too defined.

Last Module/Month of My Tolle Course

 For a long time I've wondered how and why it is that if someone is reading a book or writing in a room with me, I still feel very connected to them.  They feel very approachable.  However, if they are on a device I feel the opposite.

"...the people who create these things know they how to get you more addicted, they do know that. So these devices are quite dangerous.  They could be used in a helpful way, and in a conscious way, but they are dangerous.  So you need to not allow to let your consciousness to be dragged into these devices."  

Eckhart Tolle

Yes that is how it feels that someone's consciousness is dragged into the device.  If someone is reading a book, even if they are absorbed in the story completely, I still feel their consciousness in their body.

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The following quotes don't seem like gratitudes, in fact the next one frightens me immensely, but I understand it on some level too.

"We're living in very challenging times, and this is almost certainly only the beginning, and it's inseparable from the emergence of the new consciousness...the origin to most of them [the challenges] is to be found in the human mind." 

Eckhart Tolle

Yet another reason to not put one's hope/life in the future. Between climate change and human dysfunction it's hard to imagine much stability.  

"The greatest danger for humanity, also pointed out for example by Carl Jung the psychologist, is collective psychosis. Collective psychosis that produces absurd conflicts in the world...what's a psychosis? Certain thoughts have taken possession of your mind and you don't even know it because there is not sufficient awareness to have immunity against toxic and irrational thoughts...it's like a virus infection on a mental level." 

Eckhart Tolle

Then You Put the Words on the Page

 #1 - Laying beneath my bedroom window watching the snow fall and a return to winter with legs over the radiator and a blanket across my lap.  It's not the same as forced air heat under a blanket, but I still feel wealthy.

#2 - Listening to the Against the Odds podcast "Schoolchildren's Blizzard" while I worked and watched the snow fall.

#3 - I picked up a family from a co-worker who resigned. She had given out some books/toys ahead of time.  (Usually halfway thru an hour visit I'd have a new book or toy to pull out.)  This made me concerned that those visits were going to seem really long, but I think today we caught up and it ended up being, not ideal, but fine.

#4 - Emailing a friend to ask if we could shift a plan (made back in Nov) so I could take part in another friend's birthday event. I don't like changing plans myself and I especially don't like asking other people to change plans, and this friend is traveling internationally so I hate to bother her.  However I am trying to remember that sometimes a change of plans is better for everyone, and to just ask, which I did.

#5 - "Writing is practice also. It's not enough to want to write, you have to start writing...You have to start writing and then do it everyday, even if it is just 20 minutes, a half hour. Just write something and see if the flow is able to use your mind and create the words. Then you put the words on the page." Eckhart Tolle

Quote of the Day

 "I find it very hard to call God 'he'. 

Because you are limited already. 

'It' is also difficult. 

And 'she' also limits it. 

So, maybe one day I'm going to ask God,

 'What are your pronouns?'"

Eckhart Tolle

Minneapolis

#1 -  "Is ICE starting to leave Minneapolis? | Marianne Williamson" 

"The citizens of Minneapolis have created a template, God bless them, did an extraordinary job. and I'll tell you something, when, not if, when the history of all this is written, the citizens of Minneapolis at this time are going to be seen as real heroes." Marianne Williamson

It's true and I've been inspired by surprising heroes.

#2 - "I'm always reminded of the Churchill line, 'You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted every other option.'" - Marianne Williamson

#3 - I sent out emails to almost everyone I know in Minnesota asking them to attend precinct caucuses next week.  It's the basis of the democratic process in this state, and good timing for people that want to take tangible action.

#4 - All this makes me wonder when people will be ready for a new type of leadership. I suppose we will have a new type of leadership, when that leadership reflects us becoming a new type of people.

#5 - "If we want to save the world we must have a plan, but no plan will work unless we meditate." Dalai Lama XIV