Sunday, September 13, 2009

Sunday Sermon [Uncovering Humanity]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Yesterday will go down in history as the “Million Morans March.” The spectacle of “tens of thousands” of people advocating against their own self-interests was embarrassing to watch. Also, why don’t they just call the president a nigger already and get it over with? Rep. Wilson, an avowed son of the Confederate who brow beat Strom Thurmond’s biracial child, yelled out, “You lie!” He might as well added “boy” to that bullshit. Let’s not forget that the one who lied was Wilson, not Obama. Let’s also ignore the fact that Wilson and his family are recipients of socialized medicine.

The average neoconservative has the mental acuity of a slug.

* * *

-=[ Keeping it by Giving it Away ]=-

Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth.

-- Roberto Clemente, baseball Hall of Fame, humanitarian


There’s a slogan in 12-Step fellowships that says, “In order to keep it, you have to give it away.” Now, how the hell can you keep something by giving it away? In addition, what is that you’re keeping and giving?

In recovery, the process of healing is contained in the “recovering” of the basic goodness of your human nature. In taking away the moral issue, the process of recovery frees you to become a moral agent in your life. In recovering, you work to dig under all the conditioned garbage to get at the essence of your humanity -- an essence that is beyond good and evil.

Once you have entered the process of recovery, you begin to learn that your life was ruled by consuming. In the quest to consume, you threw away your basic humanity. But the fact is that it was never lost, it’s been there, deep inside of you all along, and as sift through the wreckage of your life, you return to your original face before you became a Hungry Ghost.

A part of recovery is coming to the realization of a narcissism that is at the root of your obsessive need to consume (not just drugs, but people, places, and things). You begin to learn that to fully recover/ uncover your humanity, there’s work to do -- there’s a need to get outside of your head and the narrow would of wants and needs and opening up to the vital connections and relationships we need to thrive as human beings. Without relationships, we die -- we wither like untended flowers. An infant will very likely die or become stunted if it deprived of the touch and caress of human hands. Your mind/ brain is shaped by the relationships in your life.

In turning from your humanity, you have condemned yourself to a spiritual starvation. I’m using spirituality in a very broad sense here. Spirituality comes from a Latin root word meaning to breathe -- and breathing is the one thing that connects us all. We all share the same ecosphere and we all breathe the same air. Therefore, in a very real sense, spirituality is primarily about connection. This vital connection is the first casualty of the obsessive quest to consume. We uncover this spiritual connection in the process of recovery.

Without that connection, we merely succeeded in moving the obsessive compulsion to use/ consume into another area of our lives.

People (co-dependency)

Places

Things (drugs, sex, ideology, etc.)

You do the inner work and recover your humanity -- your connection to others, to the world and the process of healing, of becoming whole begins. This is the “it” in keeping it. The “it” in this context is you redefined not just by your wants and needs but also by your connection to everything. It’s the bigger you, the Higher Self you, as opposed to the “mini me” you of your personal hell.

In this context, “keeping it” means staying in tune with that newly realized connection to all of humanity, to the world. How do you keep that connection vital? The only way is to give it away.

The next time you’re doing an enjoyable activity, whether it be shopping, playing a game, or having sex, bask in that feeling. Consciously allow your senses to luxuriate in the textures, colors, tastes, sounds.

Continue to do this while feeling all the people in the world who are at war, sick, or lost, despairing in loneliness -- while you’re enjoying your activity. Start with those you know, your friends and family, knowing their private pain. After as while, expand to feel everyone who may be starving, sick, or dying. From your heart, radiate to them the happiness of trying a beautiful garment, of drinking a delicious drink, of making love to a loved one. Offer them the feelings and imagine beaming your wonderful experience of your activity to all those who are suffering.

In order to be free as love, give your joy away. I order to keep it, give it away.

Give all your wonderful experiences away to others, as gifts, keeping nothing, not even a memory, for yourself. Guilt, shame, and stress come from the obsessive compulsion to hoard happy moments. If you want to walk a path of healing, of recovering your essential humanity, give your happiness away to others.

It’s the only way you can keep it.

Love,

Eddie

11 comments:

  1. <span style="">Ok you can watch it now, I would be surprised if you haven’t heard of Landmark, I would love to know your thoughts on it.  Also, if your interested and would like to hear more from my perspective, I would definitely be up for a phone conversation to talk about it.... watch ALL of the video ..lol then research ;) </span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">http://www.landmarkeducation.com/introduction_to_the_landmark_forum_video.jsp </span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Seriously, any struggle you have in life (be it with the constraints of fascists or neo-conservatism) this course gives you the answer.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Oh and I have a blog request (i know right, the arrogance ;) LOL) can you please please post a blog titled " the 101 of what a neoconservative is ...for dummy's" .... because I have goggled it and it makes no sense to me ....maybe that’s your point LMAO ...but I would love to understand the term more.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Thanks</span>
    <span style="">xx</span>
    <span style="">Zoe</span>

    ReplyDelete
  2. <span style="">So I dont "know" you but I am pretty sure that there is going to be some of the following thoughts running through your head, when you watch this introduction, like:</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Thanks, sweetie, but i got this information years ago</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Sweetie, been there done that</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">etc.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">I want you to consider that you havent, and while alot of the information you will have pondered or even know now, there is ALOT that you dont know you dont know <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">I have said on numerous occasions how powerful I think you are, and you always use the word little, or alternatively say that you think I give you too much credit, trust me when I say that there is nothing little about who you are, and I give you nowhere near as much credit as you deserve.  This course gives you the answer to EVERYTHING.  No bull.</span>

    ReplyDelete
  3. <span style="">I remember having a conversation with you years ago, see I have watched your blogs for years, commented every now and then, I was here when you had the "emily" situation, and some other crushes, I was here for the "moe" hating etc .... (the good ol days eh? got so serious round here LMAO) It was rare I spoke up in the situations, had my own things going on with other 360 communities or whatever, anyway I digress, I remember a conversation, possibly the only one ever had on IM, and I was giving you my sad story, don’t get life, how do you find happiness blah blah farking blah, and you said to me, happiness is easy, chose to be it right now, and its so.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Boy oh boy did I not get you, I thought you were trippin, but today I sit here at my laptop and I totally get what you mean.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">I would really like you to consider going to an educational seminar, lasts 3 days and an evening, by Landmark Education.  Its called the Landmark Forum.  Now I am going to give you the link below, but I would like you to finish reading my comments here before you watch it ......deal <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></span>

    ReplyDelete
  4. <span style="">  </span>
    <span style=""> Hey Eddie <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">You Said:    There’s a slogan in 12-Step fellowships that says, “In order to keep it, you have to give it away.” </span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">......and then I read the rest of your blog</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Its not really that simple though, because, to use the same example, if you are committing to the 12 step program, you first have to give something up.  Once you do that, happiness comes, and to keep it you have to give it away.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Thing is when you have it, without all the hocus pocus meaning driven ways to interpret what happiness is, something shifts, and giving it away is what makes having it fun.</span>
    <span style=""> </span>
    <span style="">Yeah I know right, where is the cool-aid? LOL</span>

    ReplyDelete
  5. OK so it took me 5000 attempts to get my comments in BUT I DID IT LOL!!!  this new comment box sucks! but anyways, i even got smart and posted fromt the bottom up so you can read it as you should (yah it took me THAT many times to work that out too! LOL)

    Am very curious for your feeback, have a great day!
    xx
    Zoe

    ReplyDelete
  6. <span><span>"I want you to consider that you havent, and while alot of the information you will have pondered or even know now, there is ALOT that you dont know you dont know </span>"</span>

    I would hope that, more often than not, this is the guideline to my quest to attain knowledge.

    ReplyDelete
  7. <span><span>"I have said on numerous occasions how powerful I think you are, and you always use the word little, or alternatively say that you think I give you too much credit, trust me when I say that there is nothing little about who you are, and I give you nowhere near as much credit as you deserve."</span></span>

    I really appreciate that you say that. My ego loves you for that, but I am not trying to miniize myself when I say that I am not powerful. I sometimes am part of a process that is powerful, but I am not that process, I am a part of that process.

    Whenever I start thinking I'm  powerful in that way, I risk losing touch with the process. If I am powerful, it is only because I am conscious of the ways we're all connected, even if others don't. So, it's not me that's powerful, "it" is pwerful. LOL :-P But I also don't want to sound as if I'm dismissing you, I'm not.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think the hardest thing about happiness, is being able to feel the joy of life even in the midst of tragedy, or in the face of injustice or hatred. As someone who once forgot how to feel, I guess some measure of gratituded helps me appreciate the cleansing quality of a cry, the lesson in a tragedy, the inevitability of death. So we can be sad or angry, but we can do that in a very conscioyus way, it helps turn those things into fertilizer for our mental flowers.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I checked put the link, and it sounds interesting. I have never heard of them, but I'm always taking classes and investigating different methods of effecting change. When I get a chance, I'll look at the course syllabus. Thanks for the link!

    ReplyDelete
  10. And here I was so excited by the new comments system! LOL

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you once again, here I found your narrative liberating and fundamentally sound. It is the very small things I think is to often taken for granted. Then some one like yourself comes a long and expresses it so eloquently and concise. It is that what i found to be especially liberating the truth as they say is always in the pudding. Take a moment and contribute to a child's smile or offer an encouraging word to the desperate but dedicated mom that wonders how she will go on, only knowing that, going on, she must. An affidavit, that there is nothing wrong with recognizing life's realities,it  makes us human and in doing so, more determine. Great Piece Eddie, i definitely get it!

    ReplyDelete

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