You might actually die

To our good friends–

Rumi says When mind is gone every tip of every hair has a new intelligence. This hit me hard and so these started out as notes. Peter Block says we need to attend to capacities not needs (hey! Notice that capacity!), and that we can anytime and anywhere choose to look deeper, grow intimate, seek the ideal. Buber says intimacy, meeting, is a grace, yet it is all around us waiting, waiting. So Block is saying, or rather I am hearing him to say, make room: be roomy, Rumi!

Notice those capacities, anywhere, anytime; seek intimacy, ideals (what else should we expend our lives seeking?); be foolish enough to seek the ideal, the meeting, the intimacy and bewildered when you do find. Make room, not space. Make home.

There is a risk in doing this. You might actually die. People might not take kindly to being disturbed by what is intimate and ideal. They might see how they have wasted their lives and challenge themselves. They might think the prophet is the problem not themselves. They might strike back. Most people however are too asleep, have too thick a skin to even notice and when they go away they go away. Some few will be awakened, some few awakened will perhaps make a difference or at least agree. Among these the dangerous ones that agree and then go back to sleep, thus encouraging others to slumber as well. Some have been killed by such as these, or lulled into their own sleep. Some have met and found themselves so changed that their old selves have died. But the opportunity for better for all is what matters, and it is larger than the evil, larger than the sadness.

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on February 16th, 2006 | No Comments »

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