Up The Mountain

The best use of philosophy is to open the door and invite a walk in the garden of thought.

Dana Bate
****************
Hello Diane
****************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
When you stop thinking, night falls.
-------------------------------------
I enjoy reading philosophy (as I have said ad tedium). And I particularly like it when the philosophers don't agree with each other. There would be no point to philosophy or any form of original thought if they did.

Many philosophers through out the years of recorded history have started out on the journey as mathematicians, measuring the length, breadth and depth of human experience. And then a day comes when they reach the foot of the magic mountain of enlightenment or what they believe or hope is enlightenment and the climb begins. There may be only one summit but the choices of how to reach it are many. And that poses a problem for some people.

I know of a Museum of Philosophy that has a lot on interesting displays and biographical material about the world's philosophers But there is also a computer with a program that lets you answer a whole string of questions, and at the end will suggest a philosopher or two that best agree with your answers. It's a Find Your Own Philosopher game. The temptation is to then read that philosopher's works and none others. One thinks one has found his master and enlightenment is inevitable. But is it?

It's practically impossible to know at the beginning if that philosopher's trail up the magic mountain is a right one. Does it reach the summit or does it lead you into an intellectual gully? You won't know till you get there. The danger is to concentrate on your master's words and ideas to the exclusion of any conflicting thoughts. To follow in the footsteps of one only guru may lead to the green pastures of peace and knowledge. But by not challenging those footsteps as you go you may end up in the shadows.

Most of the inspired philosophers I have read, from Plato to recent times, all say, in one way or another, that the purpose of philosophy is not to tell you what to think or how to think but to get you to think for yourself. In other words there is a general acknowledgment that we are capable of exploring our own thinking, forming our own opinions and testing them out, making up our own minds. Original thought is the birthright of the human being,

That leads to another and even greater opportunity and obligation for the thinking person, the one who has accepted the responsibility of his own mentality. Somewhere along the pathway in that garden of thought are philosophers who know and warn that the issues of our lives are so much rooted in our thoughts that we ought to be careful about what we think. Hence the challenge to every aroma in the garden and every thought that passes through the air like a dandelion seed. And thus the discipline of looking ahead, deciding what you want and what you don't want and tracing them back to the thoughts which produce them.

The same watchman who guards the entrance to the garden is also the guide who can steer us to our right paths if we are awake, alert and thinking.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
***********************

Through The Veil

Things that do not change and cannot change are invisible, unintelligible; we are surrounded by them.

Bate
**************
Hello Val
*****************
"Watchman, tell us of the night."
When is it night and when is it not night?
-----------------------------------------------
I won't deny that it takes a lot of courage to look within the veil. That's why only the high priests were allowed to do it. Because they were prepared for the exposure they would witness, the expression of the unknown, the complete truth in it's own language.

The spirit world is not a world of ghosts and supernatural events. It isn't filled with strange apparitions and unexpected flashes of light and mysterious sounds. If those things can be perceived they are not from spirit. Our human senses may only perceive things that change, even as something as stagnant as a rock. The intermolecular activity that happens, growth and decay, enables us to see it. There is a school of thought that claims every extant thing is really a set of vibrations and our senses sinterpret those vibrations into things, as in the case of sound. Others say that if a thing cannot be observed by the senses or by complicated listening and measuring devices it doesn't exist. That theory is fine if one believes that the human senses are all there is to acquiring knowledge.

But the high priest was prepared to witness more than his senses cold tell him. He was prepared to enter into the most holy place, known as he Shekinah, where there was brilliant light and the appearance of the unchanging reality of existence. To those outside it resembled a thick, frightening, impenetrable cloud. Superstition called it a great, specific influx of spirituality or God visiting the Earth.

How could one possibly develop a sense that can see beyond the veil and into the cloud? I think the first step would be to acknowledge that there is such a sense and it is available to man. The next step might be to affirm that the ordinary human senses can't tell us the whole story and should be excluded from the search. Then time and effort must be spent training ourselves to look and listen without those senses, to engage the mind in a pure preparation for gaining the wisdom and the desire, the definite ardent, urgent need to be led to the door of enlightenment.

Are there high priests today who can enter that Shekinah? Perhaps there are. I think so. But we would most likely be looking for them on a mountain top or in a monetary somewhere. Whereas they probably walk among us.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
**************************

On Wisdom

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T S Eliot
(Thank you Jim)
******************
Hello George
*****************
Lately I have been concerned with some topics that often make me crawl a little bit, or a lot. The main heading on the banner that flaps above my head is the word "importance." What is important and what is not and how do we know which is which.

I look around my home and I see stacks of books, too many books. I bought the books because I considered them important. They are books about things that I consider important, or used to. I think back over the years and realize I have spent many hours in obligatory reading, too many hours. Now I have a stack of books I will donate to the library, not because they aren't important but because I will never get to them. There are some books that will never leave me until the moment I step out of the dark forest.

Then there is the time wasted doing nothing. I don't mean recreation and relaxation, sports, dinner parties, having drinks and laughs with the boys. I mean hours spent shamelessly doing nothing, Maybe years.

The really terrible part of those wastes is the heart breaking sense of loss one eventually feels. Opportunities we didn't take advantage of, mistakes we made that were never corrected, people we should have remembered but forgot about, can grip us like a biting, relentless winter wind until we know how to get past them.

What do you do when all your obligations are no more? Maybe your life was filled with a lot of happiness and so you have some great memories. It is tempting to sit and contemplate the good old days. But to me that's as bad as obligatory reading, not bad to dip into now and then but not to spend the years of one's life in the past. Memories are good if they are good ones, but they are of the past, not of the present or the future. And there are still a lot more good memories to make.

You may have accumulated a lot of knowledge along the way, but you are never too young to ask yourself how much wisdom you have really won for yourself. To know things is good, to understand them is even better, but to really see how all things fit in the overall cosmic scheme of things, to have a universal awareness, to be enlightened, is best. Every step in that direction is a joyful one. a vital one.

True wisdom is far above information and knowledge. I have a lot of information, some knowledge, a spoonful of wisdom, but I am humbled in the realization of what it is possible for me to experience. I am in a dark forest of ignorance and fear, but I know the light is there and once I step into it information, knowledge, ignorance and fear will disappear, leaving the clear, still waters of wisdom as my preparation for enlightenment.

Dana Bate - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
***************************

Behind The Veil

Enlightenment - that magnificent escape from anguish and ignorance - never happens by accident. It results from the brave and sometimes lonely battle of one person against his own weaknesses.

Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano
************************
Hello Kate
************************
The older I get and the more I try to grasp and understand the things that are the most important to me, the more I realize that they are easily within my reach. So then why is it I don't have universal wisdom safely tucked into my back pack?

Nyanasobhano, who is an American born, Dartmouth educated, former actor, Buddhist, says it is because of my weaknesses. I ponder that and I can't identify my weakness itself, but I can see the effects of it. Principally it is the common human desire to find easy explanations for things, to try to accept things as they only appear to be, to avoid the fearful task of looking for the reality behind the masquerade. Nyanasobhano implies in his writings that if we really understood the Nature that we take for granted we could find a universe of peace and beauty hiding there. But, in fact, it isn't hiding. It is just that we have put up veils in front of it.

It was veils that hid from the Israelites the Most Holy Place of the Tabernacle and allowed only the high priest to enter.

It was a veil that hid the face of Moses from his followers because his skin shown from his own understanding of truth and reality. And it frightened them.

Veils hide the faces of beautiful Arab women, and it was veils that Salome cast off of herself when she danced for Herod.

It was the veil of the Temple that was torn in half when Jesus was crucified.

What's with these veils?

A veil is nothing, it has no power, no intelligence. It's just used to hide things. We all have our own veils. What we see, hear, feel, etc., the senses are our veils. The geologist is staring at a chunk of moon rock. Is it just a rock, or is it a path, a journey to knowledge and then to understanding and maybe then to wisdom, enlightenment? A man can make a silly, ugly noise vibrating his lips together. But when he does it into the mouth piece of a horn out the other end comes a beautiful tone. What is that tone? What does it mean in the overall cosmic scheme of things? Is it just a tone, or is it a journey? Is Nature explaining it's true self to us in a language we can't understand because we don't look past what we think it is?

My ignorance resides in my avoiding the brave and lonely battle with my weakness, with my failure to look beyond the veil, to dare, to question, to imagine, even to plead for the real truth of things.

DB - The Original Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
**************************************
AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Autumn is moving along.
Only 5 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answers.
DB
********************

The Awakening

The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece.

Scott Peck
******************
Hello Ken
******************
One of the sins of my youth, and I suspect almost everyone's, was wanting to know things too fast and therefore too superficially. My problem was that the things I wanted to know tended to be more of an esoteric nature. I wanted to know what the philosophers, mystics, theologians, historians, avant garde artists and experimental scientists did. I tripped a light foxtrot around the idea that everyone really wanted to read poetry and philosophy if they only admitted it to themselves. Years of living dissuaded me from that idea to my own jocularity. That's okay. To each his own.

I became so energized about learning things that I read constantly and when I couldn't understand something I figured it must be explained on the next page, so my reading was rushed, superficial and through incomprehensible paragraphs.

"Awake, awake: Shake thyself from the dust." (Isaiah 52:1) After many years of blowing the dust around I began to see, not what I was looking for, but only the title of what I was looking for: Enlightenment. I learned that some persons had actually achieved a higher level of consciousness, a mental place where the simplest truths became the most revealing and the most complicated ideas became basic building blocks, pieces of a simple temple of thought.

From the day I made that discovery my life gradually changed. Education was no longer a game, or rather it became a holy game. It is still a matter of sifting through the weeds to find the blossoms, but each discovery teaches me more about what I'm looking for and what is looking for me.

I'm just a beggar, sleeping in the dust on the temple steps. But now, at last, I know that and will wake up one day.

DB - A Wayfaring Man
Never Give Up
**********************

AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Only 4 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answers.
DB
********************

The Word Behind

Realists insist that there are truths beyond mental states, but only a truly enlightened person can know those with apodictic certainty.

David Putney
*********************
Hello Montgomery, Alabama. The Vagabond wishes you a joyful day.
***********************
25 years ago if anyone had asked me to search for realities beyond what I could see, hear and consider with my slightly above average but limited intellect I would have found the task boring and unimportant. Now, a quarter of a century later, I don't know if I can perceive the true reality behind things, but I do know there are enlightened people who know with certainly the true, self evident reality of things.

Human language is a great problem when trying to articulate and understand the unexplainable. We have to rely on the mythical, allegorical, metaphorical and parabolic that only point toward the reality. The ancient Greeks and Romans had gods for many natural conditions and many people worshipped those gods as real entities. And that has been a real problem throughout history, people worshipping the symbol instead of the reality behind it. But it is hard to see that reality, easier to anthropomorphize it.

A Jewish mystic wrote that if the universe is a tree then God is that which is behind the power which drives the sap. That light is not to minimize or even explain the divine, but to say that everything, the tree, the sap and the power are expressions, on many levels, of his God.

How many of us can look at a tree or a painting, or hear a piece of music and truly see and hear what is behind it, what it really means outside of seeing, hearing and thinking with human thought? Even the philosophy I love reading these days only leads to the door of enlightenment. And the truly enlightened ones speak to us in the clearest language of all, so clear that it is practically impossible to understand.

The way to enlightenment is to search for the invisible, look into and through everything until behind it you find the word that tells you with certainty what it truly is, the word that can't be spoken. "And the Word was God" Saint John said.

My vagabond journey goes on, and if I never achieve enlightenment I, at least, enjoy the scenery along the way.

DB - The Vagabond
*************************
The Ball Game
a story in 7 parts

Part 7

Jimmy played for the Hawks another few years and then was traded to Denver where he played for a while . Denver traded him to Tucson who traded him to Jacksonville for another few years. He played very well for all those teams, but he was now in a swapping game. When the Jacksonville season was over Jimmy was a free agent. On a hunch he called the front office of the Brooklyn Hawks and was delighted when they offered him a contract to come back. When he once again put on the Hawks uniform he never played so well.

The years wet by. Brooklyn won some and lost some. Jimmy was getting older, he just passed his 40th birthday and he was quite wealthy now. He bought a real house for his mother in a quiet neighborhood. At first she didn't want to move out of her apartment, but he fixed it up nice and hired some servants to take care of things, so she moved in.

Jimmy was thinking of retiring from baseball and taking some adult education courses, maybe getting the college degree he never got. Then he thought he might go into science as his father had done.

Speaking of his father, Jimmy hadn't seen or heard from the nice man in the lab coat and glasses for many years. Sometimes, when he was in a tight situation he would ask "Dad. What should I do?" But he didn't get an answer and had to cope with things on his own.

Then one year the Brooklyn Hawks came out on top of the league and entered the World Series against the Savannah Cougars. The series opened in Brooklyn where the two teams split a game a piece. in Savannah they also split one apiece, the Hawks barely winning the second game which went into extra innings. Back in Brooklyn the Hawks won the first game. It was now three games to two in favor of the Brooklyn.

When they battered up for the sixth game Jimmy was very concerned. They needed to win this game or it would be back to Savannah where anything could happen.

When they got to the top of the ninth inning the score was Savannah 4, Brooklyn 2. The Cougars got two hits, putting two men on base. Then a relief pitcher came in and held Savannah to two fly balls easily caought and one strike out, retiring the side with no runs.

Savannah also brought in a strong relief pitcher at the bottom of the ninth. The first Brooklyn hitter reached first base on a ground ball. The second batter struck out. On a pitch to the next Brooklyn batter the Savannah catcher bobbled the ball and the runner on first stole to second base. The next batter hit a clean short fly ball into the outfield which dropped in front of the outfielder, sending the runner to third base and giving the batter a hit.

There was a man on first, one on third, the score was 4 to 2 Savannah and one out when Jimmy stepped up to the plate. Eventually the count on Jimmy was three balls and one strike. The pitcher was waving of signals from the catcher while Jimmy swung the bat back and forth.

All of a sudden he heard the familiar voice "Jimmy." He looked around for the man in the lab coat and glasses but could see him nowhere. Just then the pitcher wound up and threw the ball. Jimmy watched it come directly toward him, slowly, gently, gracefully, like a bubble on the breeze. But it was too high and too far inside, well out of the strike zone. Jimmy thought if he let it go past him he would walk to first base, then the bases would be loaded for the Hawks best hitter and there would still be only one out. He let the ball float gradually to him and as it did he saw it dip toward the plate. When it reached him it was waist high and the catcher was already reaching for it. He stepped back out of its way and drove his bat into it with a mighty swing. He saw the ball warp slightly as it connected with the bat. Then it took off and flew at great speed into center field. The fielder backed way up the catch it but it flew past him into the bleachers.

There was an enormous roar from the crowd, The Brooklyn bull pen emptied out onto the field. The runner from third came in. The runner from first quickly rounded second and third and he came in for the tying run.

Jimmy tossed his bat aside and trotted around from base to base. Rounding third base he had a big warm smile on his face, because he was the winining run, because the Brooklyn Hawks had just won the World Series, because there was a mob of his teammates ready to pounce on him with hugs and hand shakes as soon as he crossed home plate and because he knew that his father still loved him.

The End

***********************

SPRING QUESTION

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

2 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
******************

Wake Up

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey.

Stephen Covey
************************
Years ago I went to visit a very wise man. I was seeking his advice. My acting career was going fairly well. But I was also doing a lot of broadcasting work and could drop everything and stay with that full time. I had also been doing some teaching and wanted to do more. My drawings and paintings were becoming better known. I was confused about which direction I ought to go with my life and just wanted to talk it out with him. I spelled it all out and said I was uncertain about which of those activities I should focus on. His reply, which I've never forgotten, was "The answer is none of the above. What you should be doing is waking up."

That remark has stayed with me all these years as one of the touchstones of my life, something to test all fundamental questions against. I once wrote isn't it odd that we spend most of our adult lives somewhere between asleep and awake?

These are some of those fundamental questions. Why aren't we fully awake yet? Why do we see "through a glass darkly"? and are unable to view reality face to face? Is the glass dark, or is it our own darkness that obscures the view? Is the glass a window, or a mirror, a telescope, a microscope, or all of those? Is the truth in the image on the glass or in the one behind it?

I used to take a train from Westchester into New York City. That route is a particularly busy one for trains going in many directions. Out the window I would see other tracks as they slid in under the train or fanned out from beneath it, and feel the rumble and bump as those tracks moved under the train. Eventually the ride would smooth out as we made it on to the main track and shortly after that into the tunnel which took us to Grand Central Station.

It is necessary and important for humans to make a lot of changes on their journeys. There are changes in schools, jobs and careers, in dwellings and neighborhoods, family and friends and changes in experiences, beliefs, opinions and understanding. At a certain point some people click on to the final track and know that the destination is enlightenment and spirituality. But is spiritual evolution simply a matter of waking up? Are all the choices, changes, bumps and rumbles along the journey happening in our sleep? "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" said Shakespeare.

"Know thyself" is another one of those vital touchstones of life. I have a lot of questions and some of them are fundamental and have cosmic importance to my life and to the world. But I won't have many answers until after I wake up. "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." When I truly understand myself I can wake up, become enlightened, cease looking for myself through a glass, know myself as a spiritual being and find my place on the journey.
(I Cor. 13)

DB - The Vagabond
********************

WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Only 5 responses so far

I await your answer.
DB
******************************

Waiting For The Light

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.

Emily Dickinson
*****************
"I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance." said Socrates. That realization made him a wise man. I enjoy reading the philosophers of the past and present, and what do I find? I find men and women who are searching, yes. They are searching for truth, for virtue and righteousness. But I also find another amazing trait. I find them waiting.
Some of those philosophers are scientists, some are historians or teachers, some are priests, imams and rabbis or other religious figures, some are artists, some are sailors, farmers, fishermen. But they all poke their mental fingers into every aspect of human life and probe into all the issues of human existence, from the most mundane to the most universal, trying to determine what we are, what our destiny is and what is the best life to have. They pose questions and ponder answers.

But the very best thinkers have become aware that there is a greater truth to come, a wisdom that is beyond wisdom, a place beyond the realm of simple, sane reason into a cosmic metaphysic. Enlightenment.

What makes these thinkers different from the rest of us is that they know it is there and we don't. They know that all the accumulated knowledge in the world is still ignorance when it comes to the great dawn of understanding. They also know that it is not something that can be pursued. One cannot throw a rope around it, jump off a horse and tie it up. Martin Heidegger said that when we go thinking after the most important thing to think about it retreats from us.

But to know the great truth is there and that it will come on its own terms in its own natural way if one remains prepared for it humbles the thinker into a blessed state of expectation and patience. And because no one knows when and where it will come, the philosopher is required to be perpetually alert to the rhythm of new ideas and new wisdom. The thinker's waiting is not passive. He is a watchman, a guard, a careful observer of whatever he does and what is happening around him. Bias, prejudice, assumption, foregone conclusion are not his tools. He may not have found the way but he knows the way is there and is not what we think it is.

DB - The Vagabond
*************************
Weekend Contest

Here we are a few days into Winter and I still don't have a Winter Question. I have some ideas but I open the meeting to anyone who would like to propose a good question to intrigue and inspire the readers to come forth with interesting answers.

1 response so far.

Thank you.

DB

***************************

Think Of Nothing

Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Kurt Vonnegut
*****************
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare. Most of the people in the world practice idolatry. Surely not I? Yes, you.

If I say "ball" something globular comes to your mind. Is it a floating bubble, a baseball or the moon? And if I say "truth" now what? It may mean to you that which is not a lie, or it may mean reality or actuality. Or it may mean to some the fundamental and all encompassing state of existence. In fact it means none of those things. "Truth" simply means Truth. It's a term we have to identify something which is otherwise inexpressible. A good dictionary will devote a large section to the word and yet we toss it around as if it was a ball. "Tell the truth." "Be truthful." "Be true to yourself." "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" That oath has nothing to do with truth. It's about facts. A fact is a very small thing measured against the universal dimensions of truth. Even so truth still remains a term, a title, a concept.

As soon as we reduce something to a concept, ball, rose, truth, the universe, we limit it and force it back to the center, to the garden variety of ideas. It isn't anything. It merely stands for something and the something has no word. We may turn around in circles and say the word ball stand for something that looks like a ball.

The word "God" is not God. It is a term we have to describe something that has no words to describe it. And yet some people worship the name. "Oh God, hear my prayer." They are praying to a word. That's idolatry.

To be out on the edge is to be at a place where there are no words, where concepts are left behind and where thinking is free to see and understand the unnamable. The great philosophers and theologians of history talk about enlightenment (for want of a better word) but even that is a concept, an idea whose real meaning is unknown even to the enlightened, because the enlightened have left the world of words.

When, by accident or inspiration, people approach the edge where terminology stops, they turn and run back to the center where they feel safe with the concepts in the garden. Those who stay at the edge can bring back the sights of unexplainable wisdom. But a few unknowns have had the courage to step off, supported by light and unmindful of the world they left behind.

DB
***************
AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

8 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
************************

Liturgical Links 2/19/09

It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on traditional and second hand ideals.

D. H. Lawrence
***************************
Welcome to my musings.
________________________
Yestermorn a friend asked me what I want more than anything else in the world. My answer was that I want to be a spiritual man. But what does that mean?

To me it means transcendence and enlightenment. Two big words to describe big ideas. In simpler terms it means to learn to look past the limitations of this mortality, to see through the jungle of confusion known as my life, to seek and find the immortal, invisible realities of existence, and to live there.

I've been thinking lately that one of the dangers we humans face is complacency. I am weary of talking to people who wear a cross around their necks, or some other symbol of their beliefs, but who speak in worn out generalities about faith, who can quote scripture as if nothing else has been written on the subject, who are not willing to challenge their faith on the ball field of daily experience. I have almost always believed that there was more than just faith, or rather that there was more to faith, some inner power and reality to which faith is the door.

I think many people are afraid to challenge their religious beliefs because they might find that the wizard of their faith is just a man behind the curtain. I have a friend who is a Catholic priest and also a playwright (and if you are tempted to unwrap your prejudice about that, remember that the last Pope we had was a playwright in his younger years). One of the plays my friend wrote has a priest saying that his favorite article of clothing a priest wears is a tee shirt, because it shows that underneath all the pomp, ceremony and ritual, a priest is just a simple slob like everybody else.

Enlightenment, a state of bliss indescribable both to those who have achieved it and those who haven't, is the real purpose of religion as far as I can see. It is a mysterious consciousness which exists beyond, scripture, ritual, tradition and faith. It is the final overcoming of everything that is "not good enough," the place where we get a new name, where we no longer need angels, those messengers from Deity, because we become the message, where we have ultimately been translated from troubled, sorry, sick and fallible slobs, limited by time and space, into the grand creatures we were designed to be.

Why settle for anything less?

DB - Vagabond Journey
-------------------------------
Look for joy today, and find it.

Jagged Journey 2/17/09

Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an in habitual way.

William James
******************************
Happy Wednesday to you!
(I know it's Tuesday. I'm just getting my licks in early,)
-------------------------------------------
In several ways this quote from James labels my philosophy. I'm always on the road to get people, including myself, to look at the outside and inside world with a fresh and unusual view point. Two things that are side by side may not belong together. Returning to the same place after an absence may not yield the same environment. When sure about something is the appropriate time to challenge it. "What if..." is a very healthy way to approach anything we see or think.

In essence it is the battle between good and evil, the conflict between the nice angel and the nasty angel. We are much more capable of controlling what we think than we think we are. Those who perceive, or think they perceive, the dark in some one else's thoughts or behavior are reacting to their own darkness. There are dark. sinister thoughts that crawl up into our thinking. The healthy way is to recognize that they are not our own thoughts, even though they do a very good job of masquerading as ours, and to kick them down the cellar stairs and replace them, or rather make them give way to the right thoughts. It's more than looking on the bright side of things. Looking on the bright side implies that there is a dark side. It's more like turning on a lamp.

We can, and do, spend our lives in this paradoxical state of chasing away the bad thoughts and replacing them with the good. But true enlightenment shows that the good/evil conflict is a false reality. It relies upon habitual ways of perceiving life, and the bad habit of looking for trouble and problems. I personally know of no one who has reached the point of enlightenment where there is no more struggle of perception, but I know there are people who have achieved it. It is a state to be wished and strived for.

DB - Vagabond Journey
-----------------------------------
It's a turning day. So turn the tables, but leave the worms alone.