Why don’t schools teach us
How to love each other?
Why is love ed
Reserved for Sunday school and broken homes?
15 minutes a week of wisdom
Would keep
Thousands of men and women
From giving up on themselves
And doubting life’s abundance
Why are 70-year-old men
Still worried about wives cheating?
No one showed them how to be happy
Misery finds company

Steve Martin’s 5 Christmas Wishes!

*31-day orgasm once a year
*Revenge over enemies
*Absolute power over every living being
*$30 million a month tax-free in a Swiss bank account
*All the children of the world to hold hands and sing in peace and perfect harmony

I love this! Such a great commentary on the human condition :-)

Up at mom & dad’s house over Christmas holiday, and trying to explain why making 100K/year working for the oil industry is totally unattractive to me, even with the option of bankruptcy looming. It feels like a step backward, not forward; I have nothing more to offer/learn from them; I am not at all interested; there are more important things than money, etc. None of these reasons appeases my father, and I remind him that I have not asked for his advice on the matter.

All I can think to do is keep exposing myself more socially in my city, keep reading/learning about things that interest me, and keep my eyes open for opportunities.

www.astrobarry.com

This reading was scarily timely:

ARIES (March 21-April 19): You've hit a critical checkpoint in the battle to see your worldly ambitions manifest a significant outward impact. Having put so much blood, sweat and tears on the line, Aries, you should now be recognizing how much advancement you've made… and how much further there still is to go. You in-the-moment Aries folks are renowned for being better at starting things than following through to the end with them, though the unavoidable challenge ahead requires you to maintain a strategic perseverance (perhaps over several years even) that consistently prioritizes this ultimate goal over the minute-by-minute impulses to dash toward something more immediately exciting. That's not to say you won't have plenty of that impulsive get-up-and-go—it picks up again once Jupiter re-enters Aries next month. However, no matter how the temporary bursts of momentum come and go, charge and sputter, you've got to chomp down unwaveringly on that golden key to future fulfillment like a dog who'd maul anyone that tries to take his bone. This is not an easy posture to hold for long spans of time, and therefore it's perfectly acceptable if you're reaching the realization you don't have the wherewithal or desire to 'see it all the way through'. Be honest with yourself: Either recommit to adamantly refusing to budge from this dream, or come to peace with your urge to try a different dream for a while.

This is a fitting poem for this rainy day. It was written by a man (Sufi poet Hafiz), and I am dedicating it to the men in my life who have loved and lost, and question whether they can love again:

"There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.

In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,

That "love" is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.

Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,

Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife

Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.

There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain.

Others are far, far too deep
For that."

“Each soul is potentially divine.
The goal is to manifest this divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal.
Do this either by work, or worship or psychic control, or philosophy-by one, or more, or all of these-and be free.
This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.”
Raja-Yoga

Contradiction is a lower degree of intelligence.

I did not love man-made laws and I abhor the traditions that our ancestors left us.

Most men with delicate feelings hasten to hurt your feelings lest you precede them and hurt theirs.

The truly religious man does not embrace a religion; and he who embraces one has no religion.

Souls are fires whose ashes are the bodies.

Science and religion are in full accord, but science and faith are in complete discord.

That which we call intelligence in the mind of some people is but a local inflammation.

We are all practical in our own interest and idealists when it concerns others.

Enthusiasm is a volcano on whose top never grows the grass of hesitation.

Among intelligent people the surest basis for marriage is friendship-the sharing of real interests-the ability to fight out ideas together and understand each other's thoughts and dreams.

-1923

Marriage doesn't give one any rights in another person except such rights as that person gives-nor any freedom except the freedom which that person gives.

The idea of God is different in every man, and one can never give another his own religion. -Mary Haskell

Find out the best in a person and tell him about it. We all need that. I have grown up on praise-and it has made me humble. It will always make a person long to deserve the praise. And any real consciousness is aware of something much greater than itself. Praise means understanding. We all are fine and great, fundamentally; overestimation of one another is impossible. Learn to see the greatness and the loveliness in one another–and to tell one another of it when we see it.

I realized, that all the trouble I ever had about you came from some smallness or fear in myself.

From "I care about your Happiness"

"To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the Light till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through self-giving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body – this is the integral way to the Truth."

God, help me understand why I feel so empty today. So lifeless and useless. Feeling like I need to be sparked and taken advantage of. Why do I feel like a waste of carbon? Like nothing is moving? Why can't I appreciate my stillness without trying to fill it up?