Strawberries have lots of seeds & they are delicious too

"Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds."

- Norman Vincent Peale

Taking it a step further:  if you feed your kids seedless fruit, they can't grow their own solutions. If you don't allow them to harvest their own problems, they will rely on you (or others) for fruit indefinitely.

Each of us creates our own World

The quote in my previous posting was credited to Talmund. I also found references attributing it to Anais Nin. In any case, in reading more about that quote, I came across another, credited to Anais Nin.

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."

This is a sentiment that rings true to me. Several weeks ago, while listening to the audiobook version of Eckart Tolle's A New Earth, I was struck by the truth in the following passage from chapter 10:

"Those two movements, the outgoing and the return, are also reflected in each person's life cycles. Out of nowhere, so to speak, "you" suddenly appear in this world. Birth is followed by expansion. There is not only physical growth, but also growth of knowledge, activities, possessions, experiences. Your sphere of influence expands and life becomes increasingly complex. This is a time when you are mainly concerned with finding or pursuing your outer purpose. Usually there is also a corresponding growth of the ego, which is identification with all the above things, and so your form identity becomes more and more defined. This is also the time when outer purpose--growth--tends to become usurped by the ego, which unlike nature does not know when to stop in its pursuit of expansion and has a voracious appetite for more.

And then just when you thought you made it or that you belong here, the return movement begins. Perhaps people close to you begin to die, people who were a part of your world. Then your physical form weakens; your sphere of influence shrinks. Instead of becoming more, you now become less, and the ego reacts to this with increasing anxiety or depression. Your world is beginning to contract, and you may find you are not in control anymore. Instead of acting upon life, life now acts upon you by slowly reducing your world. The consciousness that identified with form is now experiencing the sunset, the dissolution of form. And then one day, you too disappear. Your armchair is still there. But instead of you sitting in it, there is just an empty space. You went back to where you came from just a few years ago.

Each person's life--each life-form, in fact--represents a world, a unique way in which the universe experiences itself. And when your form dissolves, a world comes to an end--one of countless worlds."

Maya is the window

Maya is like a window, we only see our reflection when we are looking through to darkness.

If we look through to the light, we see the truth on the other side.

"We do not see things the way they are, we see things the way WE are." - Talmund

Equinox

"The Sun goes into Aries on the Equinox and the Moon goes into Libra Friday morning. Aries is all about finding our own identity, passion and purpose in life. It's where the spark of life ignites for each of us, where we are willing to take risks, to begin something new.

Like the Fool in the Tarot, we have to trust blindly to our instinct for LIFE. Libra is about what worth our purpose holds for others. How are we received? Who are our partners in this journey through Life?

Libra wants to balance Self and Other, with fairness and justice. How do we take other people into consideration when we have goals to achieve? Desires to manifest? Look at our leaders – Aries is all about leadership – and see how they're doing regarding relationships, fairness, justice and honor. Is their passion and purpose to serve themselves or to serve the people? Don't we need a new vision of leadership?

Not only in our elected officials, but in ourselves? Aries also asks us to consider how we see ourselves. Where do we find our sense of Self? "

teach your child how to use their own rudder

where the river narrows

Walking along the Russian River yesterday afternoon, I observed a spot in the river where the water suddenly seemed to flow faster. The current appeared faster at the surface, and along the edges of the river the water gurgled as it rushed through some plants.

The parallel in life that I notice is that when our "river" is wide, we coast gently down current. As our "river" narrows, or constricts, the current seems to speed up. The same volume is passing through, it just seems more hectic.

A contrast also occurred to me: while at the point where the river narrows, the water increases in speed; the point at which the freeway narrows, traffic inevitably slows.

The degree of love we manifest determines the degree of spaciousness and freedom we can bring to lifes events. Imagine taking a very small glass or water and putting into it a teaspoon of salt. Because of the small size of the container, the teaspoon of salt is going to have a big effect on the water. However, if you approach a much larger body of water, such as a lake, and put into it the same teaspoonful of salt, it will not have the same intensity of impact, because of the vastness and openness of the vessel receiving it. Even when the salt remains the same, the spaciousness of the vessel receiving it changes everything.

We spend a lot of our lives looking for a feeling of safety or protection--we try to alter the amount of salt that comes our way. Ironically, the salt is the very thing that we cannot do anything about, as life changes and offers us repeated ups and downs. Our true work is to create a container so immense that any amount of salt, even a truckload, can come into it without affecting our capacity to receive it.

--Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness
from Everyday Mind