UNDERSTANDING LIFE
Leon Zeldis
20
The reaction is yours
We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Most of the time, you cannot change what happens to you. Very few things that happen to us depend on our actions. However, how we react to them, is entirely in our hands. Actions affecting you are beyond your control. The reaction is yours.
Reacting the right way is difficult. Instinct drives us to do something, while our intellect tells us something else. It requires work, real effort, to train yourself to think positively, to control your words, to control your actions, finally to control your thoughts.
Take an example. You are driving in traffic, and another car cuts into your lane blocking your path. You can get angry and curse the other driver who acted aggressively and dangerously. Or you can slow down, let the other go ahead. What does it matter if he gains a couple of seconds in his drive, and you lost a couple of seconds?
It is hard work; there is no way to disguise this fact. But you can do it. You are the master of your house.
You are the one who can decide. What the other did you cannot change, nor can you teach him to drive better. The only thing you can control is your own reaction.
With faith in your own powers, with trust in that the little voice inside you that tells you that what you do is right, or – hopefully seldom – that you did wrong, you can face events with calm self-reliance.
You are master of your words.
You are master of your acts.
21
Instinct
Beware of instinct. Human instincts have developed in the course of many thousands of years to preserve personal life so that the species can continue. Thus, instinct may force us to react to a threat by fighting or fleeing.
These are the instinctive reactions. Fight if you feel you are stronger than your enemy. Flee if you feel otherwise.
Survival is the objective of both manners of reaction.
These reactions are understandable within the context of a primitive world where humans were just becoming distinct from animals.
So we tend to react this way when facing a threat; and also when facing a challenge of any kind.
Fight or flee.
We must overcome this instinct, through reflection. Is there a challenge before us? We have to pause, observe, analyze, draw conclusions. Only then react. Thought must precede action, not follow it.
When we act instinctively, irrationality can lead our actions. After that we look for excuses, to justify our actions. Not only explaining yourself to others, but most important, justifying your actions to yourself. This leads to self-delusion, to life in an imaginary world where you never can do wrong, but deep inside you know this is not true, and then you are unhappy with yourself. And this feeling is translated into anger.
All this can happen because of instinctive reaction to a challenge.
Think before you fight or flee.
22
Awareness
There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
William James, 1842 - 1910
The Greek philosophers had a well-known motto: Know Thyself. The knowledge of the world begins with self-awareness, self-knowledge. The alchemists had another legend: VITRIOL. This is an acrostic, the initials of a Latin expression: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Ocultum Lapidem. That is, Visit Inside the Earth and Purifying you will Find the Occult Stone.
The earth here is man's own personality, which must be purified, that is, the negative impulses it has must be contained, eventually eliminated, and then one finds the hidden stone, the proverbial philosopher's stone, which is no more and no less than understanding. In Hebrew "even" (stone) and "havana" (understanding) are close together.
But, what is the tool that we can use to perform the required purification? Love, that property of the soul that embodies all that is positive, all creative forces, the light that conquers darkness.
And love, to be able to germinate and blossom and spread out must begin with one self. You are a wonderful human being, recognizing this is the first step to loving others. If you love others without first loving yourself, this love will have no roots, and it will soon wither and die.
Above the door of your mind, engrave this legend: Love Thyself.
Remember, you are a wonderful human being, everything is possible, if you set your mind to do it. Start now!
23
Concentration
The Zen Master, Osho, used to say that at all times it is possible to be total. What did he want to express? That whatever you do, do it with absolute concentration, that your mind be focused on what you are doing with exclusion of everything else; that is what he meant by total. It is not easily achieved, much practice and effort are required, but as you progress along this road, it becomes easier.
Sometimes we start doing something, and then we think of something else which is more urgent, and thus, bit by bit, we try to do several things simultaneously. This is the opposite of totality. Concentrate in one thing at a time, but with total concentration.
Another thing we generally do is to digress, to let our thoughts fly off freely, allowing thoughts to come and go, jumping from one to another, calculating, remembering. Do not allow yourself to be trapped by mental indolence. Focus your thought.
Being total is acting like the trapeze artists in the circus. Should they become distracted even one instant, the fall is inevitable. That is why they are totally concentrated in what they are doing.
I repeat, this is not an easy task, but you climb a ladder one step at the time.
24
Love Thyself
The Greek philosophers had a well-known motto: Know Thyself. The knowledge of the world begins with self-awareness, self-knowledge. The alchemists had another legend: VITRIOL. This is an acrostic, the initials of a Latin expression: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Ocultum Lapidem. That is, Visit Inside the Earth and Purifying you will Find the Occult Stone.
The earth here is man's own personality, which must be purified, that is, the negative impulses it has must be contained, eventually eliminated, and then one finds the hidden stone, the proverbial philosopher's stone, which is no more and no less than understanding. In Hebrew "even" (stone) and "lehavin" (to understand) are close together.
But, what is the tool that we can use to perform the required purification? Love, that property of the soul that embodies all that is positive, all creative forces, the light that conquers darkness.
And love, to be able to germinate and blossom and spread out must begin with one self. You are a wonderful human being, recognizing this is the first step to loving others. If you love others without first loving yourself, this love will have no roots, and it will soon wither and die.
Above the door of your mind, engrave this legend: Love Thyself.
25
Making a better world
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, an attentive ear, an honest compliment or the smallest gesture of care, all of which have the power to transform a life.
Leo Buscaglia
Most people would like to live in a better world. I'm sure you, who are reading these lines, would like it. But, how can we make out world better? Making the world better is a huge enterprise, beyond the powers of most people. Some people invent new drugs, machines, computer programs. Others build dams, ships, houses. Some politicians make laws (not all of them are good, unfortunately). All of them are trying to make the world better. But perhaps you are not one of them. What can you do?
Wait a moment, why think only on such a large scale? Let's think small. Saying a good word to a friend, kissing a child, doesn't that make their world better? We just saw that every person lives in his own world. By helping another person, you are improving his world, and the whole big world is only the composite of all the billions of personal worlds.
Saying an affectionate word to a friend, kissing a child, smiling at a neighbor, don't they make a better world? Each person lives in his own world, and the entire world is made up of all these small individual worlds.
Start with your little world around you, and like the electromagnetic waves issuing from an antenna can go around the world, what you do will expand and have effects you cannot imagine.
26
Improving your home
Where do you live? You live in your home, of course, your house, or apartment, or bungalow, or a room in a hotel, or a trailer. That is where you live.
Is that all?
Your mind does not live there. Your body does. But your mind lives in your head, or beyond, in some plane outside the physical world.
You like your home to be beautiful, well arranged, comfortable. The same applies to your mind, the place where you live your mental life.
The same as you arrange the furniture of your home, and paint the walls, and install the lamps that will lighten the rooms, so you can arrange your thoughts, make sure that your thoughts are positive, that they assist you in making your life beautiful. Look at new pictures, smell a flower, walk along the beach, let your mind expatiate as it enjoys all the wonders of life.
Avoid thoughts that poison your mind, that dirty your soul. Read a good poem every day, listen to some music. Sit down and relax and let your thoughts wander, perhaps reflecting on what the poet really wanted to say when he wrote those lines.
A beautiful mind is no less important than a beautiful body.
27
Waiting for the right time
We often have the intention, or the desire to do something, but we wait for the right time to come. It can be a journey, or studying a new subject, or a change of career, or going on vacation with the wife and children. In short, there are many decision of this kind in the course of life, decision that we delay for a better opportunity.
The problem is that the opportunity never arrives, or sometimes it arrives too late. Time is the only irreplaceable capital, and when it ends, it's over.
What is important, then, is to make the best use of every day, every hour, and to create the opportunities, not waiting for them to arrive.
Because the future is the present repeated time and again, so whatever you want your future to be, you must start now, in this infinitesimal period of time we call the present, between the frozen past and the unborn future, because in this razor's edge of time is where we live..
Do not delay, postpone, defer, because you will never have the certainty that the right time to act has come. At every moment there are obligations, requirements, urgencies to take care of, you are too busy, too tired.
Seize the moment. Hamlet gained nothing by procrastinating. And see what happened, he died in the end, so all his doubts were pointless.
Don't wait. Your life begins now, start living!
28
Never give up
Never give up. Losing hope is losing the battle. Many times in your life you may have felt there is no chance for success. The game is over, and you lost.
Not true. The game of life is never over, so long as you can breathe and think. One door has closed? Another will open. The opportunities wait around the corner.
Edison once defined genius as 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration. To invent the electric lamp he performed thousands of experiments, searching for the proper material to make the filament. Each experiment failed, yet he went on to the next one. By the same process he invented the gramophone and many other things, always experimenting, trying, failing many times, but never giving up.
History is full of examples of men and women who fought for an ideal, failed time and again, but went on and in the end they succeeded.
On a personal level, we face difficulties every day. Life is full of problems, of decisions we have to make. The easy response is to delay, to consider the obstacle insurmountable and abandon whatever you wanted to do.
Pogo said: The world is full of insurmountable opportunities. That was a joke, but it makes a sad comment on real attitudes.
Do not accept that opportunities are surrounded by insurmountable obstacles. Move forward!
Never give up.
29
Opposites
The world is full of contradictions, of opposite qualities, opposite directions: high and low, right and left, hot and cold, light and darkness.
As I explained before, in the section on Light and Darkness, darkness does not exist; it is simply the absence of light.
Someone wrote that the opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. The same could be said of the absence of hatred, or the absence of desire, etc.
That is the difference between properties of the physical world, which are complemented by their opposites, and the properties of the spiritual world, which we could say, they are one way. If they grow, they have no limit, but if they diminish they reach a point of nothingness.
However, this is not exactly true. There are sentiments which leave their place to their opposites if they disappear. The classic example is unrequited love, which becomes blind hatred.
Many times our affection is not corresponded. We deeply love a child, take care of him, provide for all his needs, and when he grows up he returns our love with criticism, indifference, neglect.
Then we may feel sad, betrayed, even angry; we want to punish him, to make him feel the same pain that we feel.
We are adding darkness to darkness.
If instead we try to add love, lighting another candle, and another, until our whole being is infused with love, our wound heals. With love the pain will gradually fade.
We are the masters of our mind.
30
The importance of one word
The Hebrew sages taught that the world is in unstable balance between good and evil. One little push can make it fall to either side. One good act, one good word can save the world. But on the other hand, one evil act can have fatal consequences.
This teaches us responsibility. By acting with serenity, measuring our actions and our words, we can ensure that the world does not fall into the abyss.
The sages also taught that words are more lethal than steel, because a sword can only harm somebody at arm's length, an arrow has a limited range, but an evil word can cause grievous harm many thousands of miles away from where it's pronounced, and may continue to cause harm for a long time.
Say a kind word, a word of appreciation and encouragement to a child, and see how his eyes brighten, his attitude changes. Most people will forget a mistake, but the kind word will be remembered forever.
31
Positive thinking
Half a century ago (1952) Norman Vicent Peale published a book entitled “The Power of Positive Thinking” which enjoyed phenomenal success. Over 20 million copies were sold, translated into 41 different languages. Many other books appeared following Peale’s, bringing the same message expressed in various forms: that approaching life with a positive attitude will make it easier to face problems and some, in fact, would vanish when confronted by positive thinking.
But, one may ask, what is this “positive thinking”? How can we know we are really thinking in a positive way? The root of positive thinking is faith. Having faith in yourself, in your capacities, in the strength of your will, and also faith in not being alone in this “world you didn’t make” as a poet once said. You have confidence in the existence of God, who did not create this world in a moment of madness, but with a reason, with a final purpose, to whose achievement you are a partner.
Every woman, every man has a wealth of spiritual powers at her or his disposal. Many lie unexploited in some deep region of the mind, and one is unaware of their existence, unless we make a determined effort to think and act in such a way that these fountains of strength surge forward and assist you in facing the challenges of existence.
Positive thinking is having confidence that you are capable of doing what must be done. The attitude is “yes, I can”, never negative feelings of impotence and resignation.
32
Words that cure or kill
The power of language over our body is poorly understood. Our mental world is composed of three different levels. First, there is reason, which is expressed in words. We think in a given language. Of course, if we know several languages we can think in any or all of them at the same time. Immigrants to a new country usually experience this phenomenon.
The second level is emotions. We feel love, hate, admiration or regret without expressing them in words. The art of the poet is finding words that bring to the mind of the reader or listener the feeling intended by the poet. Reasoning is often tinged or affected by emotions, often without our being aware of it.
The third level is will: the impulse to do something, to act, or to refrain from acting. Again, this part of or personality is connected with the other two, in ways that psychologists struggle to understand.
It is obvious to everybody that emotions affect our body. As explained in another section of this book, fear makes us sweat, the heart beats faster, etc. Grief makes us weep. Happiness makes us laugh. All these physical reactions are caused by non-verbal emotional states.
Words too, language, affect our body. Since emotions affect our body, and words affect our emotions, it is inevitable that words affect us physical being.
All the words, those we think, of those we read or hear, all affect our body. They may help us to overcome an illness, or they may cause of aggravate one. Thinking “good” words, positive words, will improve your physical being as well as your mental one.
Decide right now, to make an effort to banish negative words and feelings from your mental world. You can do it. Start now.
33
Patience
One of the greatest virtues is patience. You don't have to make a better world today. You don't have to become a good person by the stroke of a magic wand. All change, to be long lasting, has to be gradual, it takes time. No problem. You are starting today so you are on the right track.
Be indulgent with yourself. You know that you are a good person. You don't have to prove this to anybody, to yourself least of all. But you can improve. You are improving every day, every hour. The fact that you have read this little book to this point proves it, as if you needed proof !
Plant in your heart the seeds of truth and love, and see them grow. Feed your love every day. Being kind to others will make you to be kind to yourself. Be good at one moment, and it will be easier the next time. Good accumulates, it gives you strength; it clears your mind.
Faith is not born out of doubt, but of certainty: The certainty that you are a valuable instrument for the improvement of the world.
Believe in yourself. The universe turns around you. You are the center. You are the most important person in the world.
34
Inner peace
We all search for inner peace, peace of the soul. Particularly now, when the rhythm of life is so intense and our responsibilities so great, it seems as if our heart is bursting with anxiety, from one jump to the next. In this storm, we aspire to recover inner peace, that which we enjoyed as children. That intimate confidence we had, that the world was good and that everything would be solved, always.
How to recover inner peace? We can do it in two ways. We can look for the child’s state of mind, his innocence, his benevolence, his unselfishness. Or else we can follow a rather more difficult way, which is to look for the causes of our anxiety, and eliminate them gradually. All this, of course, is metaphorical, since the inner processes of the soul cannot find expression in words.
First, it is necessary to understand that calm cannot result but from contentment. There are several classes of calm: a calm bearing tension (the calm before the storm) and other calm, resulting from absence of tension. The first is fictitious. It’s the calm of the businessman who “doesn’t lose his head” even if he is burdened with multiple problems that require his attention. Sooner or later the accumulated tension surpasses the limit of his resistance and he has a “breakdown” or something worse. What we must look for, then, is true calm, without hidden tension or repressed energy (although we shall see that through our intimate calm we shall liberate unsuspected energies).
Tension proceeds from opposition or diversion. In general, we can say that the most important conflict facing a person is the difference between what he is and what he would like to be. A woman is poor and wants to be rich; if plain, she wants to be beautiful. A clerk wants to be the manager. In general, every person has ambitions that he is unable to fulfill. Here we could remember the words of Marcus Aurelius: “You must want to be what you are; cooperate willingly to the work of nature, and everything will appear easy to you.”
Should we stop trying to achieve that ideal that we want? Certainly not; but as you progress, as you become at peace with what you are, you will be able to move forward faster; even your physical appearance will change. There are no plain people, only people who are beautiful in different ways.
35
The perfect prayer
Some people think that prayer must be a formal procedure. You must kneel or adopt a special position, and hold your hands in a special way, or be in a special place or that you must say your prayers aloud.
In fact, you can pray at any time, in any place, in silence. Since God is everywhere, and most important, in your own heart, you can pray silently and you even do not have to express in words what you want to say. Can you express in words the beauty of a flower, or the feeling invoked by a melody? So much more difficult would be to put into words our love for God and the feeling that God loves us.
God knows what you need, your desires. Just thank God every day, at every turn, for the fact that you are alive, for all the wonderful things you are able to see, and do, and keep in mind always that you are a partner in the process of creation, an important part, giving meaning to your existence. Praise God, thank God, and God will know what you need without asking.
36
Your life as a work of art
Your life is a work of art, like a painting, or like a tapestry. You are the painter. You are the weaver.
In making a tapestry, the warp threads are stretched taut, and the weaver inserts the weft with his fingers, using one color at a time, filling out the figures. Your genes, your upbringing, all your past life is the warp of the tapestry. This you cannot change. It's given, you have to accept it and work with it.
But the weft is what you think and you do, day after day, hour after hour. You can use yarns in bright colors or weave in dark shades. Make the shapes you want. The warp is the substrate, but the figures are made by the weft; with whatever yarns you use, and the figures that you make with the colored yarns, which appear on the face of the tapestry, these are yours to decide. You are the weaver of your life.
Take another image, that of an oil painting. Suppose you are the painter. Every time you are adding touches of paint, enlarging the picture, correcting it, improving it. Some brush strokes overlap older paint. Oil painting is wonderful, because you can mix the colors, blend them, or you can let the old color dry and paint over it, add a shade or change it completely, scrape the old or take new paint with your brush and cover the old paint.
There is no limit to what you can do. The painter is master of his picture, as the weaver is master of his tapestry. You are master of your life. Use the colors you want. Make the figures you want. Your life is in your hands.
Make your life a work of art.
37
Your life begins today
Your life begins today, now, this very moment, as you read these lines. This is no joke and no empty slogan. It's the truth. The future is unknown, anything can happen, it still doesn't exist, it is still not part of your life.
The past, on the other hand, is frozen, unchangeable, like a museum full of statues. You cannot move them. You could spend your time looking at them, reflecting how better it would have been if this statue had been smiling instead of frowning, how this couple could have been closer together, and how that statue of a child could have shown him happily riding a bicycle, instead of being engraved on a tombstone, but they are only statues.
Marble doesn't move. Bronze does not flinch. Your museum of memory is still, silent, frozen. So why waste your life looking at these old statues? Leave the museum for a later day, when you are old and have time to sit back and reflect and remember all the good things you did. And the only time you have to do all these good things is now! The present!
Get going, start living. Your life starts today, and you can do anything you want with it. It’s your life; it does not belong to the statues. You can fashion your life as if you were molding wax, make your life as you wish, it depends only on you. Because you cannot change what HAPPENS to you, events are out of your control, but you have full control on how you REACT to them.
Somebody called this the 90/10 principle. Ten percent of your life is what happens to you, and 90 percent is how you react.
Make a decision, right now, that your life is to be a good one, a happy life; you deserve it, you are entitled to live a full and productive life.
Your life starts NOW!
38
Ideal to real
I want to refer to what could be called the “disappointment when the object of ambition is achieved, when ideal becomes real”. To make clear the concept, consider, for example, the woman who dreams of being rich. What for? To travel, to buy expensive clothes, jewels, move to a bigger home, be accepted in high society.
Another example, the businessman who dreams night and day on the time when he will rest, retire to the countryside or the beach or the mountain, there to be alone, without cocktails, without deals, able to commune with God and seek deep into his soul until finding the door to the divine and eternal happiness.
Both persons feel constrained to their present situation. Both feel dissatisfied, certain that they are capable and entitled to a better existence, more dignified, more in accordance with their true worth, if only they had the material means or conditions to give free expression to their individual capabilities.
Both, of course, are absolutely wrong. The ambitious woman, if she won the lottery and had at her disposal all the funds required to materialize her ambitions, will soon find that the money is not enough, because now she has further needs and aspirations, and the executive who finally retires, may soon become bored, he'll discover physical infirmities of which he had not been aware, and he won't be happy unless he did develop the interests that will keep him active after the end of his business career.
In other words, the problem is this of living waiting for something, a wait that never ends, instead of living in the present, doing the best with what you have, and not delaying to an imaginary future what you could do at once.
39
On performing miracles
We could speak of the man who, knowing something about Oriental philosophy, wishes eagerly to be able to execute certain tests that could convince even the most skeptic about the control of mind over matter, such as, for example, levitation, walking on embers, second sight, or healing by psychic powers.
It happens, however, that to reach such qualities, it is necessary to have such a mental set of tools that during the process of acquisition, the way of thinking of the person, his personality, will change, so when he becomes capable of performing “miracles” - so called - he won’t have the least interest, nor will find any valid reason, to make public demonstrations of that kind.
On the contrary, it is quite possible that, even being capable of performing them, he will abstain because they might impede his further development. Furthermore, the capacity to perform such acts are probably a mere sub-product of the gradual development of the individual’s capacities, through his spiritual progress, and probably, seen from the elevated point of view that must be reached in order for such byproducts to appear, these acquire characteristics totally unpleasant and deserving to be avoided as much as possible.
40
The Scientific Method and the belief in God
Some thinkers are of the opinion that a rational person, who bases his world picture on scientific facts, cannot accept the existence of a superior, all-powerful, all knowing being designated by the name God.
First, the nature of God cannot be described or imagined by the human mind. Since He is beyond definition, no attempt to assign to God properties or characteristics known in the material world (such as intelligence, power, mercy, justice, etc.) can be justified rationally.
Assigning a name, naming something, is in some way setting boundaries. This is that and nothing else. That is why God has no name. God, Dios, Elohim, they are mere sounds, signposts to a reality that has no name and that is beyond our comprehension.
Existing on a different plane from that of the physical world, a plane that we cannot even imagine; it is presumptuous to try and endow the Deity with this or that virtue or power. All such attempts to humanize God are condemned to failure, leading to inconsistency and contradiction. How can a just God allow injustice in the world? How can an all-powerful and merciful God permit all the terrible deeds that we witness every day? Children murdered, innocent people suffering horrible deaths? Evil triumphant everywhere?
All this is the result of assigning human characteristics to God, while we should realize that God operates in a manner that we cannot understand, that has nothing to do with our ideas of justice, mercy, etc.
Is that cause for despair? Should we raise our hands, and decide that since we cannot understand the logic of the world, let’s act as much as we can for our own benefit and damn the consequences?
Certainly not! We know that the universe was created with a purpose; we are part of a majestic design, a play – in the words of Shakespeare – not one written by a fool, but in accordance with a plan that we do not know, but which definitely must exist, because of the order existing in the universe. Order implies design, and design implies purpose.
41
Mind and Body
The connection between mind and body is so evident that no proof is needed. Let me give a few examples, just to make clear what I mean. When you are sad, don’t you cry? If you worry, you feel tightness in your stomach, or maybe nausea. Fear makes people sweat. Anxiety quickens the heartbeat. All these effects of emotions on the body exemplify the more obvious of the connection I mentioned.
However, there are many other, less evident connections and effects. Stress can bring about asthma or some other allergic symptom.
More important, the thoughts we have affect our body, and vice-versa. Feeling “bad” makes us sad and angry. Now, extend this phenomenon to simple thought. If we have positive thoughts, is it not reasonable to expect that they will have a positive effect on our body? And on the contrary, will negative thoughts affect negatively our body? I think this is exactly as in the case of emotions.
There are many cases of seriously ill persons who assist their healing by their positive thinking, their single-minded decision not to give up, and in the end they overcome the disease.
It is necessary to think positively, optimistically, always having in mind the beauty of the world and of life, this life that we must enjoy as long as possible.
Avoid dangerous, destructive thoughts. Avoid filth. You like to live in a clean home, well ordered, healthy. You live in your mind, in your thoughts and feelings and volition. Would you like to live in a dirty mind? Of course not! Banish the dirt, depression, darkness. Focus on the good, the light, happy thoughts.
You can do it. It depends only on you. If you wish, you can be happy!
Do it now! Start this very moment! Time flies: use every day, every hour to make progress in your mind cleaning project.
42
Sensing beauty
Beauty, somebody wrote, is in the eye of the beholder. Well… yes and no. Certainly, some people will see beauty where others will not, but the important point is that one has to be trained to see beauty. Training not as in a school, but personally, one must train oneself to become aware of it. The world is full of beauty, just look for it and you will find it.
Walk along the street. See the trees, SEE them, observe every detail, see how the trunk bends a bit, twists, then explodes in branches, not symmetrical, yet so beautiful, showing such strength, such search for the light, striving up and up, and the small branches coming out, and then the leaves, each a world in itself, the smooth curve of a leaf, the serrated edge, enlarging the contour for some unknown reason.
Just one tree, yet how much beauty it holds. Look farther out, see all the trees lined up, how they differ; each one has its individuality, just like people.
Looking at nature with the eyes of an artist you will find beauty everywhere, and men are like trees, each one is different, each one with his individual beauty.
Feel the breeze; enjoy the kiss of the air on your skin. Go into a flower shop, absorb the myriad aromas emerging from the flowers; look at them, see how perfect each is in its own shape, the gradation of colors, the way they blend.
Surround yourself with beautiful things that will remind you of how beautiful the world is. A painting, a drawing, a little statute, a vase of flowers, even artificial ones can be beautiful. Enjoy looking at them, enjoy good music, not only soft music suitable for meditation, but also strong, vibrant music, full of energy, of drama,
Think of all the beautiful things you have become aware of. All of them are connected, all belong into the same world, and you are part of it. You are a beautiful part of a wide, beautiful world open before you for your enjoyment.
43
The music of the world
One who doesn’t know music looks at a score without understanding why some notes are black and some white, some long and some short, some stand alone and others are linked in pairs or in larger groups, some rise and some descend. So is life, the world, only God knows how to read the music of the world, because He composed it.
All the living creatures are players in this orchestra. Some have a few notes to play, and then are silent. Others have long solos, others still play loving duets; there are so many different combinations of instruments, of melodies, that only the Master Composer knows the full score of the universe.
You are part of this music. Your life is your instrument. Play a beautiful melody. And join others: join the harmony of the world.
44
Productivity
Nothing gives more satisfaction that making something, be it a work of art, a dish, or a knitted sweater. Working to make something can be intellectual – writing a book, or a poem, devising an invention – or it can involve physical action, building, knitting, drawing, gardening, cooking, sewing, doing carpentry. The list is almost endless. The point is, you are working to produce something that didn't exist before.
Writing down figures on an account book is not creating. Watching television is not. Reading the newspaper is not. Playing cards is not. You may feel satisfaction playing bridge and beating the other couple, but you didn't produce anything. I'm not saying bridge is bad, it is simply insufficient.
When you create something, you are acting like God. That's what an industrial designer said, that's how he felt when facing the blank sheet of drawing paper before him.
You can't write poetry? Write letters, or a diary, or your memories from childhood, that will serve your grandchildren as a link to their past.
It's never too late. A friend of mine became a widow a few years after retirement. So she started painting, and she's doing it very well, she has a talent that only now is blossoming.
Everyone can create something, and the act of creation is a cumulative asset. Make something new every day, write, draw, bake, look for things you never tried before.
Remember, God's love finds expression in creation, and being creative you express your love for God.
45
Change is inevitable
Nothing in the world remains the same. You are not the same person as when you were a child, a young woman or man, an adult, even what you were yesterday. Today you were born anew.
The Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the water in a river is never the same, from one moment to the next. The same applies to every living creature, and to all physical objects subject to the forces of nature. The sea ebbs and falls with the tides; the water in the sea heats up and becomes vapor, vapor forms clouds and becomes rain, rain drops on the land, rivers are formed and flow to the sea. Change everywhere, all the time.
So it is with our body, and so it goes with our mind. Did you learn a new word today? Then your mind of today is not the same as that of yesterday. Did you listen to a nice piece of music? The feeling you felt makes you different.
Change is inevitable, so one must learn to accept it, to live with it, to adapt.
There is positive change, and there is negative one. But these are subjective value judgments. Let the positive outweigh the negative.
Positive change is evolution; it is feeling more in tune with the world, more confident of the possibility of growing and achieving spiritual plenitude.
46
Memory
We all know the experiment in chemistry, where a small crystal is introduced into a supersaturated solution of the same substance, and this becomes immediately a mass of polyhedral crystals.
Our mind functions in a similar way. Small bits of information floating in the mind suddenly find meaning and shape and they launch a chain reaction. Knowledge, understanding, result from a crystallization process, taking bits from different places. This is not a linear reaction, but a network-like process.
One important point is that remembrance, on the other hand, is linear. We remember one thing at a time. Think of a piece of music you know, whatever. Just think of it for a moment. During that time, you cannot think of anything else.
The mind works very fast, so we usually are not aware of the linearity of our thought process. Awareness is like a spotlight, focusing on one thing after another. It may move fast, but it can never illuminate two different things at the same time. There is no split screen in the mind.
Strengthening the spotlight means focusing on this one thing you hold in your mind at a given moment and concentrating, not letting your mind wander, not letting the spot of light move away.
Train your mind to act like a dog, bite the object of your attention and don't let go.
47
The lesson of the garden
A king went into his garden and discovered that his trees, plants, flowers, were dying.
The oak told him he was dying because he wasn't tall like a cedar.
The cedar complained that he was sad because he didn't bear fruit like the vine.
The vine was dying because it had no flowers like the rosebush.
The rosebush cried that it was not strong like the oak.
Then the King found a plant, the carnation, which was fresh and blooming.
The king asked: how come you are so healthy while the rest of the garden is sad and decayed?
The flower answered:
'I don't know. Perhaps it's because I assumed that when you planted me you wanted carnations. If you had wanted an oak, you would have planted an acorn. At that moment I thought that I would try to be the best carnation that can be, and here I am, the most beautiful carnation in your garden'.
We are what we are.
We live withering in our own dissatisfaction, our absurd comparisons with others. 'If I were like…', 'If I only had .…', 'if my luck was…'.
Always thinking of impossible futures, instead of the concrete present, stubbornly blind to the fact that happiness does not depend from others, but from oneself.
We can elect to be happy with what we are and what we have, or live with the bitterness of not being something else, of lacking so many things.
It is natural and healthy to aspire to be a better human being, or to be rich so we can afford to do something else, but without letting these aspirations to become obsessions, grieving because we failed to achieve them, comparing ourselves with others.
We shall flower when we accept that we are what we are, unique beings; nobody can be like us, and we cannot be somebody else.
48
Zoom in, zoom out
When looking at a map on the computer screen, usually there is a control that allows you to get closer to a specific point, that's called zoom in, or zoom+, and if we want to see the bigger picture, as if looking at it from greater distance, we zoom out, or zoom-.
In daily life, we usually go around zooming in. When facing an obstacle, or regretting a mistake, we zoom in, we examine every detail, go over and over it, we get deeper and deeper into the state of mind that leads to anger, despair, insecurity.
We must learn to zoom out, to distance ourselves from the local and strive to see the big picture. Did you lose a job? Don't zoom in, examining every factor, every little detail, thinking how different and worse will be the future if you cannot go on doing what you did until now.
Zoom out. Look at the big picture. You are still you. Now your horizon has expanded. You can find new opportunities, new friends, new avenues for development. Zoom out; the world is freshly born around you. Look further out, beyond the boundaries that held you restricted to your daily routine. The word Routine is linked to rut. Yes, working in a rut is easy, it demands little from you. But jumping out of the rut allows you to see farther away, mentally and physically.
Zoom out and see the big picture.
49
The fleetness of life
Centuries ago, philosophers (and others) used to place a human skull over their desk, or in a bookcase in their sight. This was a memento mori, a reminder of death. Another popular item in this same line of thought was an hourglass, or a clock showing an old man with a scythe.
This was not a sick obsession with death, but a healthy reminder that our time on this earth is limited, and we should spend wisely the time we have been given.
Poets have often reflected on the fleetness of life. The Spanish playwright Calderon wrote: "Life is a dream, and dreams are only dreams". Shakespeare, John Donne and many others have written expressing similar thoughts.
Here is a poem by Li Po that I find particularly apposite, The Old Dust:
'The living is a passing traveler,
the dead, a man come home.
One brief journey between heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.'
A similar view is expressed by King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1: 'Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever… there is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered.'
And a final quotation in the same vein, from the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique:
Let the sleeping soul remember,
alert the brain and wake up,
contemplating
how life passes by
and death comes around
so quietly.
However, the reality of death is no reason for despair. When it comes, it will come. There is no point in dwelling on it. What is important is what you do with your life, how meaningful it is; how much you enjoy every moment of your living.
50
The fear of death
Some people fear death. The thought of leaving forever, of not being able to be with their family, their children or grand-children, their friends, is depressing.
And perhaps some people fear the dangers of their destiny in the afterlife. Some people believe in hell, and are not sure they can escape that fate.
But wait. How do we feel pain? From our body, of course. And since we exist after death outside of our body, how could we feel pain? Impossible!
Is that the only kind of pain, physical pain? No, there is mental pain, the pain of loneliness, the pain of frustration, and the sharpest pain of all, the pain of unrequited love.
The true pain of hell, if there is hell, is being separated from God, of loving God and not being able to join Him.
But there can be no fear of that happening, because God is love, and if we develop our sense of love, we shall surely find ourselves immersed in that ineffable reality we call God.
Postscript:
Live every minute of your life. Whatever form of existence you will have after death in this world, it won't be a continuation of this life, so enjoy every hour while you are still here!
Remember, your life begins NOW !
Herzlia, Israel, July 2005- January 2008