Flip The Dial

Fire can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men.

James Baldwin
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Hello Ernie
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I've spent much time and effort scraping through embers trying to find a spark to light up the spirits, other people's and my own. It's so easy to shut down the fire and settle for the hum drum. "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear yo not?" (Mark 8) Why do we maintain the habit of looking at the world as if it was mainly uninteresting? Why do we not look for the invisible things, and listen to hear what may be inbetween the sounds around us? Have we forgotten or do we take for granted that we have a mind filled to abundance with thoughts, ideas, dreams?

Remember the radio with two stations? You don't? I bet you have the feeling right now that I am about to remind you. I wrote about it a couple of times. It's a Cabbalist idea. Imagine there is a radio and it plays only two stations. One of them broadcasts only good news, and the other one only bad news. Now image that you turn the radio on and set it at the good news station. But as soon as you turn your back and walk away it automatically flips over to the bad news station. When you realize it you have to go back and readjust the dial, until the next time.

Now imagine that this radio is your mind and the way it works. Right? How many hours a day do you listen to the bad news, the fear, worry, anger, resentment, doubt, depression, despair? Dial flipping is seriously needed there.

Believe me I know how difficult it is to get that dial pointed in the right direction, especially since the bad news station has given you something to worry about or to be afraid of. You don't want to let go of it. You would almost rather chew your head off than hear some cheerful news. You are enjoying the misery. And that's why you need an impulse, a reminder, a kick. And that's where the vagabond comes in.

I have just about typed my finders to the bone stirring up the embers, trying to get people to stay tuned to the good news station and to remind them that the human spirit when armed with the everything of good thoughts and not the nothing of bad thoughts is a powerful force, and when focused on the ins and outs, the ups and downs and the backs and forths of life it can perform miracles.

Remember, the opposite of good isn't evil.
The opposite of good is good-and-evil.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up

A Certain Goal

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Dale Carnegie
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Hello Ernie
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night is ablaze with secret places.
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There are many writers like Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale who have been issuing advice to the world wrapped in the technique of Positive Thinking. There's nothing wrong with that. It is certainly preferable to the opposite. But Positive Thinking is really a finger pointing to a certain goal.

Many people use the elements of Positive Thinking to achieve success in life. That implies some degree of self awareness. As Christopher Morley wrote, "There is only one success, to be able to spend your life in your own way." And which way would that be? Implicit in that remark is knowing yourself well enough to at least avoid the ways that are not your way, but does it mean you know where you want to be going? To know something does not necessarily mean to understand it. Does knowing yourself automatically make you comprehensible, intelligible to yourself? How well you know yourself is also just a finger pointing to a certain goal.

As I stated in a previous journal entry, self discovery often brings out things, attitudes, traits, beliefs and behavior that are less than what you imagine or wish yourself to be. Then a struggle ensues and it's a hard one. Gandhi wrote "It is far easier to conquer others than to conquer oneself." It's a mighty and valorous fight and also a finger pointing to a certain goal.

But what of the person who doesn't want that struggle, who would prefer to stay the way they are and not grow? Those are the ones who spend their time and money to try to preserve what they think is youth and beauty, to regain some artificial sense of themselves, to identify themselves in some superficial way, usually with the help of chemistry, instead of letting themselves grow and evolve into true manhood and womanhood. To let go of fantasies about oneself and grow to achieve what one believes one is capable of is another finger pointing to a certain goal.

Mind is the master of life and the thoughts and images carried in the mental satchel determine the kind of life we live, which is why the positive thinker has the advantage at the task of living well and if allied with self awareness and self knowledge the thinker is enabled to observe the finger and point himself toward the certain goal.

Along that road to discovery to which the finger is pointing we come across a gate and at the gate is where we must leave behind the human mind, as improved and useful as it is, for the enlightened mind, where ideas become thrones and thoughts are candle flames. Who knows but one who has been there, who has achieved that consciousness, who has won the right to pierce the cloud and dwell in the secret place, what the blazing symbols mean and what power is available. Purity and inevitability are there, and the simple answer to the simple question "What is Truth?"

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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Searching The Grains

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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I don't know everything. I don't know anything. I don't want to know everything about anything because then I would have nothing to learn. The universe is an infinite place but life is greater than the universe, it's greater than the infinite because it includes the universe.

Some people believe that life ends, that there's a stopping point. There's death. Or there's the "Great Reward" when we are judged for the life we lived and then are checked into heaven or hell to spend an eternity in torment or whatever it is that folks do in heaven. I think those concepts are very confining and not worthy of the universe in which we live.

Space scientists are among those who are looking for some form of life an other planets, and sooner or later they will probably find it. They should certainly continue the search. But until time travel is discovered all the information they get will be billions of years old. Even so, the search itself is the result of the need to know things, to learn things. To some it may seem to be like analyzing grains of sand on a beach, but the search is also a search into human life. Every discovery, each new thing learned, affects human mentality even if we don't notice it.

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is a search for life itself, for the knowledge of what life really is, outside of stars and planets, and the discoveries that affect our mentality, our perception of life, are also discoveries of mind and mind is what is greater than the universe.

In the mental gutters of the world the human mind seems to be used for nothing but a universe of dangerous, disgusting or pointless activities. Some people have risen out of those gutters, many have not. Those who have not are stultified by beliefs and are not in a search for anything beyond what they know. It can be seen in commerce, politics, government, the business of daily life, religion and, yes, even in art.

When we reach the level of understanding that even the stars and planets are not as important as mind, the true universe, real exploration will begin and real life will continue.

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

4 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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