PEBBLE
I urge you to place your faith in the human capacity for creativity and love, because these two forces, when combined, possess the power to illuminate any darkness.
~Edmond Kirsch, shared by Kelsey in Fond du Lac, WI (who liked this line from a character in Dan Brown’s novel “Origins”)
BOULDER
Your attention is basically a currency. And what you spend it on matters. You can spend it on outrage, and the world feels angrier. You can spend it on kindness, and the world feels a little softer. The thing is, you only have so much to spend, right? It’s a finite resource, so what will you spend your attention on today?
~Steve Burns, in a podcast conversation with Jamie Lee Curtis
PONDER
Is the world a friendly place or a dangerous place? Are we humans the manifestation of divine expressions of light, or are we primarily selfish creatures, unable to rise above our darkest impulses? Is our mind a dazzling array of infinite possibilities, or an ever-so-slightly-modified prehistoric storage system pre-wired for fear, selfishness, and rage?
Our brains have a tendency to put things in categories, and then to force ourselves to choose. In our bestest, wisest moments, we know the answer is….YES! It’s true we are frequently tempted by the simplicity of either/or thinking, and it’s also true that we have the capacity to embrace both/and awareness.
In fact, just assembling this very issue of Ripples, I found myself zig zagging between “Dude, you’ve already made this distinction so many times in these little weekly splashes, can’t you find something original to ramble on about?” and “The comfort of binary thinking is so tempting that variations on the themes of nonduality are helpful for us all.”
Which is it? BOTH!
This theme keeps showing up for a reason. Lots of stuff is going on in your immediate vicinity and around the world. Loads of good stuff, quite a bit of hard stuff, and a whole bunch of plain ol’ boring, inconsequential stuff. Our immensely powerful and also limited minds have a tendency to filter out a lot of it, and we’re specifically wired to focus more on the dangerous stuff than the delightful stuff.
How about we make an extra effort to notice what our minds are noticing, and bring a little extra attention to the good stuff that sometimes gets overlooked? Notice what you notice, and see what happens next….
Peace,
Paul
P.S. Remember that I’m offline for a few weeks…while still providing a fresh splash of inspiration each week that I stored up pre-hibernation!