Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us.
I can live only wholly with you or not at all.
Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits.
Yes, unhappily it must be so.
You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never.
Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. And yet my life in V is now a wretched life.
Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men.
At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection? My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once.
Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together.
Be calm - love me - today - yesterday - what tearful longings for you - you - you - my life - my all - farewell. Oh, continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.
Ever thine.
Ever mine.
Ever ours .
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
War and Peace.
You want peace. It can be safely assumed that there is no one who does not want peace. Yet there is something else in you that wants the drama, that wants the conflict. You may not be able to feel it at this moment. You may have to wait for a situation or even just a thought that triggers a reaction in you: someone accusing you of this or that, not acknowledging you, encroaching on your territory, questioning the way you do things, an argument about money...Can you then feel the enormous surge of force moving through you, the fear, perhaps being masked by anger or hostility? Can you hear your own voice becoming harsh and shrill, or louder and a few octaves lower? Can you be aware of your mind racing to defend its position, justify, attack, blame? In other words, can you awaken that moment of unconsciousness? Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war, something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs the drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within that theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather be right than at peace?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Being Right. Making Wrong.
Complaining as well as faultfinding and reactivity strengthen the ego's sense of boundary and separateness on which its survival depends. But they also strengthen the ego in another way by giving it a feeling of superiority on which it thrives. It may not be immediately apparent how complaining, say, about a traffic jam, about politicians, about the "greedy wealthy" or the "lazy unemployed", or your colleagues or ex-spouse, men or women, can give you a sense of superiority. Here is why: when you complain, by implication, you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against, is wrong.
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. In other words, you need to make others wrong to get a stronger sense of who you are. Not only a person, but also a situation can be made through complaining and reactivity, which always implies that "this should not be happening". Being right places you in a position of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and found wanting. It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.
Facts undoubtedly exist. If you say: "Light travels faster than sound," and someone else says the opposite is the case, you are obviously right, and he is wrong. The simple observation that lightning precedes thunder could confirm this. So not only are you right, you know you are right. Is there any ego involved in this? Possibly, but not necessarily. If you are simply stating what you know to be true, the ego is not involved at all, because there is no identification. Identification with what? With mind and a mental position. Such identification, however, can easily creep in. If you find yourself saying, "Believe me, I know" or "Why do you never believe me?", then the ego has already crept in. It is hiding in the little word "me". A simple statement: "Light is faster than sound," although true, is now in the service of illusion, of ego. It has become contaminated with a false sense of "I"; it has become personalized, turned into a mental position. The "I" feels diminished or offended because somebody doesn't believe what "I" said.
Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth, in any case, needs no defense. The light or sound does not care about you or anybody else thinks. You are defending yourself, or rather the illusion of yourself, the mind-made substitute. It would be even more accurate to say that the illusion is defending itself. If even the simple and straightforward realm of facts can lend itself to egoic distortion and illusion, how much more so the less tangible realm of opinions, viewpoints, and judgments, all of them thought forms that can easily become infused with a sense of "I".
Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts. Furthermore, it cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to that event. Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness - not through thinking - can you differentiate between fact and opinion. Only through awareness are you able to see: there is the situation and here is the anger I feel about it, and then realize there are other ways of approaching the situation, other ways of seeing it and dealing with it. Only through awareness can you see the totality of the situation or person instead of adopting one limited perspective.
There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgment, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, and so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right. In other words, you need to make others wrong to get a stronger sense of who you are. Not only a person, but also a situation can be made through complaining and reactivity, which always implies that "this should not be happening". Being right places you in a position of imagined moral superiority in relation to the person or situation that is being judged and found wanting. It is that sense of superiority the ego craves and through which it enhances itself.
Facts undoubtedly exist. If you say: "Light travels faster than sound," and someone else says the opposite is the case, you are obviously right, and he is wrong. The simple observation that lightning precedes thunder could confirm this. So not only are you right, you know you are right. Is there any ego involved in this? Possibly, but not necessarily. If you are simply stating what you know to be true, the ego is not involved at all, because there is no identification. Identification with what? With mind and a mental position. Such identification, however, can easily creep in. If you find yourself saying, "Believe me, I know" or "Why do you never believe me?", then the ego has already crept in. It is hiding in the little word "me". A simple statement: "Light is faster than sound," although true, is now in the service of illusion, of ego. It has become contaminated with a false sense of "I"; it has become personalized, turned into a mental position. The "I" feels diminished or offended because somebody doesn't believe what "I" said.
Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth, in any case, needs no defense. The light or sound does not care about you or anybody else thinks. You are defending yourself, or rather the illusion of yourself, the mind-made substitute. It would be even more accurate to say that the illusion is defending itself. If even the simple and straightforward realm of facts can lend itself to egoic distortion and illusion, how much more so the less tangible realm of opinions, viewpoints, and judgments, all of them thought forms that can easily become infused with a sense of "I".
Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts. Furthermore, it cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to that event. Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only through awareness - not through thinking - can you differentiate between fact and opinion. Only through awareness are you able to see: there is the situation and here is the anger I feel about it, and then realize there are other ways of approaching the situation, other ways of seeing it and dealing with it. Only through awareness can you see the totality of the situation or person instead of adopting one limited perspective.
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