Worth Repeating- Lionel Corbett

"There are still people who have very powerful, spiritually important visions, but they don't talk

about them. Some people have these experiences in nature. They are the nature mystics; they

experience the devine in the natural world. [yours truly] Some people experience it in relationships.

Some people through creative work. [ music, art] Some people through the body. Some

people through our pathology and illlnesses. Religions have given you a few ways to experience it,

[the sacred] but in fact there are all kinds of ways to exerience it."

Thanksgiving Greetings

Hope your Thanksgiving was about love and gratitude. 

Answering questions

When you love people, single or plural, you try to answer their questions to the best of your

ability. When you don't love, you withhold and disregard questions.

TaoTeh King LXXIII

Nature itself has the patience to endure insult, yet always wins in the end.

 

It does not explain;  nevertheless all understand.

 

It does not command; but all eventually obey.

 

It does not hurry; yet everything is accomplished.

 

Nature's web is so wisely woven- wide enough to catch the biggest, fine enough to catch the smallest--

that not a single thing escapes.

Anonymous Programs

Anonymous Programs are misnamed these days. They have swung all the way to the opposite side

of anonymous. The members, lacking better things to do, discuss other members ad nausea. There is

more gossip and more judgementalism then there is in society at large. In a small community, the

psychiatrists and therapist, who know most of the members, also discuss and gossip about patients

 on a daily basis.  In essence,

this is a form of social control, but it was never intended to be that.

 

One of the ways of control, as in all good cults, is to condemn anyone who leaves.

 That is to make people afraid to leave.It serves to keep the membership up.  All cults use this

and shun people who leave the club or church group.I understand the Book of Revelations in the Bible

was written for exactly that reason.   Members will tell you all the rational reasons,

except that the club or church could not meet the needs of that person. or that the club has gone

insane with their rules and regulations and nasty gossip.  The members cannot concieve of their

being something better in the world then what they have. They are sad, sick folks.It's a woeful self-obsession

by the group as well as the individuals in it. . It's a belief that I'm ok, you're not. If you leave, you are less

then the people who stay.  No freedom of thought involved. One must think and talk as dictated by the

good book and the priests or senior members or self-appointed leaders.  But it works to keep people faithful. People

used to be able to get help and move on, but no more. Gossip has substituted for letting go of another habit. As if

that were the be-all and end- all of life.  People with diseases form groups and run together because it gives them

an identity, when life fails them or they fail life.  Their friendships are not real, but are totally dependent

 on their membership. Leave the membership, away go the friends.

Nothing emerges in any friendship except the cult beliefs. Great thinkers and leaders do not come from

these cults because the members are obedient sheep.

 

Many escape and move on with their lives building wonderful relationships and creating wonderful things, but

they will always be spit upon by the membership who are too sick to create a life for themselves and

others full of blessings, creativity, love, and joy.  

Tao Teh King

If one remains silent and keeps to himself, he will not fail to fulfill his life;

But if he gives advice and meddles in others' affairs, he invites trouble.,

Gossip

Folks who don't know how to talk directly to a person....you know, like an old fashioned I, Thou

conversation, find confort in talking about people. As Oprah puts it, " Gossip means we haven't

emboldened ourselves to talk directly to the people we take issue with.".

 

If someone asks you about someone else, give them their phone no and say, Call them yourself!

or, Ask them yourself.

 

Everytime you gossip about someone, you diminish yourself and all involved.  I have never seen so

much gossip disguised as concern. If you are so concerned, why not contact that person directly?

 

If you ask people how they are  in order to report to someone else, the real question is, "Why do

you ask?