18 - The magic, spiritual number.
ONE - The ONENESS that is ALL. All there ever was; All there ever is; All there will ever BE!
(8) INFINITY - The ETERNAL PRESENT Moment. Eternity; Forever!
That which was never born; never dies!
"When a person has pity on all living creatures, only then is one noble." - Buddhist Saying
We all need each other. More than this, we need to help and sustain each other.This concept extends beyond human beings, for the world is full of other creatures God has made that make our lives fascinating and entertaining.Animals and plants constitute our ecological history, yet we often rob and hurt our environment. Recovery from alcoholism means more than putting down the drink.Today I adopt a responsible attitude that makes me care, on a spiritual level, for my world.
God, as I look around my world, I cannot help but honor You.
Thoughts of revenge create an energy of imbalance and is best dealt with by releasing your anger.
There can be times when we get so angry with someone that we
find ourselves imagining ways to seek revenge for the hurt they've caused us.
Remember, however, that the thoughts you've just had are energetic creations.
In order to keep yourself from having to take part in the rebalancing of
energy, it is important to release the person and the thoughts into the care
of the universe with forgiveness.
Before we allow ourselves to invest our energy into negative thought or
action, we can remind ourselves that everything has a purpose. We can then
consider that perhaps the actions of the other person or people may have had
nothing to do with us. If we don't take their actions personally, it may be
easier to release them. Remembering that every interaction is an opportunity
to make a better choice, we can take a deep breath before responding,
allowing us just enough time to connect to center and make the choice to respond
from our higher self. We can never know all the circumstances that may have
led anyone to do anything. By not passing judgment on anyone, and instead
sending hope for their healing, we may create something positive out of a
difficult situation. We can then release it, since dwelling on it can cause
an energetic drain in our system, causing us to really only hurt ourselves.
When we can release our hold on negative events and interactions, we leave it
in the hands of a wise universe to work out the best solution for all
involved.
In every moment we have a chance to make a choice to bring light into the
world. When we bless others with the gift of our positive energy, instead of
letting circumstances affect us negatively, we bring a little peace to the world
every day.
The Compassion
Virus is concurrently infecting the human species along with the
Coronavirus. The more you know about it, the better.
INCUBATION PERIOD
The incubation
period of the Compassion Virus may be quite long. Infection can
occur months or years prior to the appearance of symptoms and even predate
the birth of the infected individual. In these cases, infection is deemed
to have occurred in another personality of the soul of the infected
individual. Five-sensory diagnosis is impossible because souls and other
personalities of them are undetectable to five sensory clinicians.
EARLY ONSET
Individuals in the
early onset stage of the Compassion Virus appear asymptomatic.
Physical symptomology is absent, however, internal nonphysical markers are
self-identifiable by the infected individual. He or she begins to question why
he or she performs certain actions apart from obvious benefits and
detriments. Is it for the benefit of himself or herself or/and the benefit
of others? At this stage the Compassion Virus becomes contagious.
ADVANCED SYMPTOMS
Advanced symptoms
of the Compassion Virus include behavioral changes such as interest
in the well-being of random others. These aberrant behaviors
hinder accumulation of influence, ability to manipulate and control,
acquisition of redundant houses, automobiles, clothing, and luxuries, and
accomplishment of conventional aspirations. Infected individuals eventually
exhibit compassion for everyone, including individuals they
previously disliked, for example, greedy, exploitative, insensitive, rude,
brutal, masochistic, and sadistic individuals. This serious and significant
symptom signals the final stage in the progression of the Compassion
Virus and indicates that it has taken control of the infected
individual. At this stage the Compassion Virus is highly contagious.
RECOVERY PERIOD
There is no recovery
from the Compassion Virus.
SUGGESTIONS
Examine yourself
carefully for signs of the Compassion Virus. If you find any, take
the following actions immediately:
1.Look at it with your eyes wide open. This
is a potentially life-changing condition.
I’ve been seeing a lot of newsletters, articles, and texts from friends talking about taking advantage of all the free time at home that we all have as a result of the pandemic.
The general consensus seems to be that since we are all at home 24/7 now, why not learn a new language, gain a new skill, or just become more self-actualized, fit versions of ourselves?
It seems like I’ve received 60-plus emails from healers, teachers, and authors, all encouraging me to join in meditations and classes. And while I appreciate their efforts and insights, I feel like we are missing a beat here.
We as a society just went from 0 to 60, or rather—in this case—from 60 to 0 in the span of about a week. The public attitude seemed to go from “the virus won’t affect us, we will be okay,” to “everybody hunker down for several weeks or months, and don’t leave the home.” Things seemed safe…and then they weren’t.
Though work continues for the lucky among us, everything else has come to a screeching halt. Visits with friends and family, community events, entertainment, eating at restaurants, and for some, even leaving the house.
It’s important to pause and acknowledge that our entire reality has shifted fundamentally, both collectively and individually, in a span of days. We are stuck in our homes when two weeks ago, most of us could go out and operate freely without much of a care for our health. It seems as though we have entered an alternate reality in which we are 1) physically limited, 2) socially isolated, 3) uncertain about the future, and 4) each of our individual choices has enormous stakes and possibly dire consequences.
From afar, the Coronavirus didn’t look real. And now it is. And here we are—in a bit of a dystopian nightmare.
And, thus we have this existential, almost fanatical self-improvement phase. To me, this has an undertone of self-denial. As though if we say “all is well,” and embody the platitude, then maybe the world will put itself back together again.
But there is loss, there is grief, and there is fear that comes with what we are all experiencing now. To deny these feelings is to deny the reality of the situation, and to deny ourselves. It is my experience and understanding that these feelings of dis-ease will lurk in the background, demanding our attention, until we acknowledge and process them, on our own and together.
So I’m here to encourage a pause, to let it all sink in. I want to invite us all to slow down and acknowledge the tragedy and hardship that has just befallen us—to take a beat. There is a collective trauma taking place, and right now it feels as though we are unwilling to be with it. But through decades of psychological research and experience, we know better.
So be in your feelings. Do nothing for a little bit. See what is present inside you. Try not to distract yourself 24/7 unless you need to (which many of us do). If you have the capacity to hold space for yourself, to feel upset about the situation without spiraling, then please do so. For yourself, and for all of us. Because otherwise, we are operating from distraction, appeasement, and denial. Not from presence and wisdom.
If there is sadness, fear, anxiety, terror, uncertainty, or all the above, allow those feelings to be there. Name them to yourself, feel them in your body. Then dance, move, sing, create, run, write, punch pillows, cry—do whatever feels expressive of what’s inside. And if you need help coping, reach out to a trusted friend or mental health professional.
In conclusion, distraction is a handy and effective pacifier, allowing us to safely gain distance from what’s happening. I myself use it when I can’t cope with life—as my Netflix queue would attest. Of all the vices, it’s pretty innocuous and shouldn’t be demonized, especially in moderation. But it also won’t solve what ails us. Denying what we feel, even to ourselves, takes us further away from true connection with ourselves and others.
So be real and vulnerable with yourself. Admit what is going on inside, and if it feels right, share it with others.
Then do what feels good. Don’t force yourself to take up Claymation or Mandarin, or anything else. Don’t make yourself a project. Don’t pretend, to yourself or to others, that you’re anything other than what you are—human and, most likely, afraid.
Trust is one of the most important factors of a healthy and happy relationship.
Unfortunately, not all of us have it. Our past experiences highly dictate the kind of person we become.
Have we been disappointed or hurt? Have we put our trust in someone and they broke it? Has reality crashed our high expectations of people?
All that we have been through and all that we have felt contribute to how much we trust our partner. Hurt doesn’t necessarily have to come from our current one. They can serve as a vessel in which we unconsciously pour our distrust and past disappointments. We walk in caution, constantly making sure they don’t inflict on us the same old pain.
It’s even harder when our current partner is the direct reason for our suspicion and doubt. It’s painful for both parties, especially if they choose to stay together after an act of betrayal.
Regardless the motive of distrust, the relationship is put at stake. Without an adequate amount of comfort and safety between two people, their partnership will always be wounded.
Helping our partner to rebuild trust is undoubtedly arduous. It might not be our responsibility or problem, but it’s definitely an act of love and kindness. The journey might require a sufficient amount of work and effort, but it will certainly provoke a good change.
Below are five ways that can help rebuild our partner’s trust:
Willingness.
Before taking any steps to help our partner, we should ask ourselves if we’re really willing. I might be stating the obvious here, but it’s quite an essential point to dictate the level of our enthusiasm. A partner who’s not entirely eager to build trust might cause damage more than good. That said, for our actions and attitude to be thoughtful, we must be willing to stick by our partner on this journey.
Patience.
Rebuilding trust doesn’t happen in a day or two—it might not even happen in a year or two. Think of your partner’s trauma as a third-degree burn that could leave a scar for years. That said, to eradicate our partner’s doubts, we must be patient with them. They might not be swiftly responsive; they could stand up and fall again a hundred times, but remember that emotional healing needs time.
Understanding.
Oftentimes, we lack understanding when it comes to our partner’s experiences. It’s natural. We hardly understand our own, how about others’?
Nevertheless, if we want to rebuild trust, we must, at least, have an idea about what they went through. Check what happened and how they feel about it so you can comprehend the depth of their suspicion today. This way, we won’t judge our partner or ask them to be okay when they obviously aren’t.
Better than love, we all want to be understood.
Healthy communication.
When an issue arises because of mistrust, how are you communicating it? Are you giving your partner a hard time for not trusting you? Are you calling them paranoid or crazy? Are you asking them to deal with it alone because it’s their problem?
How we communicate with our partner in such times plays a great role in their already existent trauma. Defensiveness only strengthens their mistrust.
If we’re keen to help them heal, we should be gentle in our way of communication. Try to learn from them what caused their distress. Ask how you can help and implement a way together to avoid the issue in the future.
Taking right action.
We must realize that we’re an immense contribution to our partner’s sense of safety. Trust is earned; we all know this.
Do your actions contradict your willingness to help your partner rebuild trust? We might help in one way, then confuse them in another.
Make sure that your actions speak loud enough that your partner instantly feels secure around you. We can be their source of comfort instead of their source of confusion in various ways.
Is there something in particular that makes them doubt you? Be sure to come clean and eliminate all the reasons that cause your partner insecurity.
"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge." - Alfred North Whitehead
How little I understood when I was living as an alcoholic. How little I wanted to know. Ignorance was bliss in addiction. I had no idea how serious my alcoholism was-how it had developed in all areas of my life, how destructive and negative I had become-until I was made to "see" reality in treatment. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes to recognize my ignorance. I knew I needed to change my attitude if I was to recover. The enemy of the spiritual life is ignorance because it stops me from realizing the strength and healing power of spirituality that has been given by God. All I need do is discover and appreciate it.
I pray for the courage to confront the ignorance in my life.
Spiritual greatness is defined more by what we do with all that we have learned, and less with what we know. It is behavior that makes us spiritual, not beliefs.
In the portion of Tzav, Moses is instructing the sons of Aaron how to bring sacrifices to the Tabernacle. The portion is filled with many intricacies and much minutia on how to carry out sacrifices: what to burn upon the altar; what not to burn; what to eat; and what not to eat. The words tell us a story, but every letter is a code, revealing insights about the union of the physical and spiritual worlds. I’d like to focus on one aspect giving us a direction for the seven days ahead.
One of the instructions Moses gives to the sons of Aaron, is to take the ashes from the sacrifices made upon the altar, and to move them to a place outside the Tabernacle. This seems like a strange request! Nadav and Avihu were considered to be of an extremely elevated consciousness. Of all the people in the congregation, why would they be required to perform the task of taking out the garbage? It seems like a job for a lowly servant, not a high priest. Surely the sons of Aaron have more important scholarly and spiritual things to do.
And yet, it is exactly the opposite. The higher the spiritual level we attain, the more we are required to work – to use the shovel, to go into the dirt, to be the servants of our community and of humankind.
This reminds me a lot of a lesson my late husband Rav Berg learned from his own teacher, Rav Brandwein. The Rav had traveled such a long distance to be with his teacher, to study with him for the very first time. He was so anxious to learn Kabbalah. Yet, when he arrived, his teacher, Rav Brandwein, insisted that they pack up boxes of kabbalah books together. Naturally, the Rav was confused. Packing boxes? Couldn’t he pay someone to pack the boxes? He had come to study important wisdom with a great spiritual master!
This was his first lesson from Rav Brandwein: A master does not only teach. A master does.
A compassionate person is not considered so because they speak of compassion, but rather because they are compassionate. A caring person does not teach about kindness, but rather expresses it at every level. A spiritual being does not preach to people about spirituality, but rather they embody it.
There is a very special energy in the universe this week. Perhaps you’ve already begun to feel it. It is pushing us forward, helping us all to evolve from a place of thinking, talking, and even acting spiritual to a state of being spiritual.
May we be ever present and on the lookout for these opportunities that present themselves to us this week. May we see all challenges that arise as a chance for spiritual elevation. Let us find those moments where we can move ourselves from being a spiritual student to becoming a spiritual master.
For as we learn from the portion of Tzav, the greater one’s level of spiritual elevation, the greater their capacity and responsibility to walk the talk.
Ramblings about Kerouac, by a woman on her period, at 6 a.m., during a pandemic.
It’s 6 a.m. and I’ve been up for the last two hours, laying on my couch with my arms clenched around my guts as my partner and step-daughter sleep soundly in their beds upstairs.
Ugh, periods suck.
I tried reading a bit of Kerouac, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, to distract myself from the pain. I love his rolling, run-on sentences. His matter-of-factness. His lack of shame as he tells me about his week-long benders, and waking up in a dirty alley with a hobo, and his need to shower and escape, and disappear into nature. To just be, for a week, or a month, or a year. With the trees, and rocks, and moss that is growing on the north side of everything because it is cold and damp and that is what moss does.
I imagine that I am a bit like him. Or I would be, if I drank a bit more, and wasn’t a woman, and didn’t live a stable domestic life in LA with a partner, and a step-daughter, and had a better grasp of language, and rhythm, and knew a few more words.
As I said, it’s 6 a.m. and I am on my period, during a pandemic, and unfortunately, Kerouac’s run-on sentences and drunken adventures aren’t helping. If anything, they are making me want a drink, but my 10-year-old will soon bounce down the stairs, knitting needles in tow, with a ball of chunky orange yarn because I taught her the basic stitches yesterday, and we are on a Stay-At-Home Order, which means no school, so now she is making a scarf. Or something that resembles a scarf.
So I can’t have a drink. Or I could. If I wanted to.
Kerouac would have a drink, he’d say f*ck it and he would have a drink, whether it was 6 a.m. or 10 a.m. or noon. But he had a problem. Which eventually led to his death. In ’69. At 47. An abdominal hemorrhage. Caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. May he rest in peace.
One of my favorites quotes of his is from, Dharma Bums:
“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running — that’s the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can’t hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that’s all.”
We should all live like Kerouac in these uncertain times. Not the drinking part. Or maybe the drinking part if that strikes a chord but most certainly the living life to the fullest part. And the shamelessly discovering and accepting all-sides-of-one’s-self part. And the writing about it part.
Because, as I said, these are uncertain times.
Most businesses are shut, for now, until who knows. Horn-honking, tension-filled, freeways are now empty. And people filled sidewalks and neighborhoods are now quiet.
This is an opportunity.
An opportunity to take off our shoes and roll up our pant bottoms, and rustle up our hair and run to the nearest mountain top, or swagger, or skip. And dig a divot in the shape of our body in the soft earth, with our hands, and lay down in that divot and feel the cool dampness beneath us. And close our eyes, or leave them open, and listen to the wind as it blows through the swaying firs above.
This is an opportunity to scream at the top of our lungs on that same fir-covered mountain, until there is nothing left to scream about. And so, we stagger for a few steps and then drop to our knees as a few tears stream down our warm cheeks, in the dark because the entire day has passed and we are tired. And now that all the anger and fear is gone, we feel a bit empty. And sad. And maybe we stay there a while, propped up against a thick trunk, until the tears stop and we are calm and then we make our way down the mountain, and on home, where we pull out a chair and sit at our cheap unstained pine Ikea desk, or antique roll-top desk. And, with a pen and paper, we write about what it feels like to be us in that raw, depleted moment.
Or maybe we don’t do any of those things because I am, after all, just a rambling, sleep-deprived, woman on her period, at 6 a.m., during a pandemic.
But if we do decide to do those things, or some version of those things, may Kerouac’s, “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose” below be a guide for us all, both in life and on paper:
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy.
Be submissive to everything, open, listening.
Try never get drunk outside your own house.
Be in love with your life.
Something that you feel will find its own form.
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind.
Blow as deep as you want to blow.
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind.
The unspeakable visions of the individual.
No time for poetry but exactly what is.
Visionary tics shivering in the chest.
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you.
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition.
Like Proust be an old teahead of time.
Telling the true story of the world in interior monologue.
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye.
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.
Accept loss forever.
Believe in the holy contour of life.
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.
Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better.
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in your morning.
No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge.
Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it.
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form.
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness.
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better.
You’re a Genius all the time.
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored and Angeled in Heaven.
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