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-----Original Message----- From: Bill@bkspeaks.com [mailto:Bill@bkspeaks.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 11:07 AM To: ordinarylife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [ordinarylife] Summary for November 4, 2001 ORDINARY LIFE - Thoughts and Ideas to Help You Live a Happier Life ====================================== Summary of November 4, 2001 ====================================== Dear Folks ? This Sunday's Ordinary Life gathering continued to focus on a spiritual response to the days following the events of 9/11 and following. One of the questions people are raising is: What can we do to be safe? This presentation responds to that question. I shared with you how we realize what we visualize. It is important to know the role and use of myth, magic and ritual in our lives. The key to released power for our time and lives is in personal responsibility. It is also important to know the principle of cause and effect. We are constantly tempted to forget that life is a gift, that no one is special, and that change can occur only at the conscious level. This presentation also included the principles of "mind and spirit" we can use to meet our moral obligation to be happy. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Full text of the presentation ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dancing in Difficult Times ====================================== The title of my talk with you today is "Dancing During Difficult Times." These are those are they not? At least it seems so. We are assaulted by news we don't want to hear and yet if we don't pay some attention we may not know how to be alert. I practice my own preaching at this point. I never listen to the news or look at the paper until after I meditate in the morning. I believe what the publication "The Onion" advised investors when the market dropped can apply to a multitude of matters. They said, "Investors are advised to remain calm, and leave the panic to the professionals." But even after meditating, when I pick up the New York Times, it chills me. What's next? Is there any way to be safe? I was interviewed for the ten o'clock news Friday night for the NBC affiliate here. The interview lasted twenty minutes. Twenty seconds got on the air. During the interview the reporter asked me what I thought people needed to do to deal with their fear and stay safe during this time. I said, "Don't smoke and wear your seat belt." The fact is that far more people die on a regular basis as a result of cigarette smoking and car accidents than die as a result of the terror we read about in the paper. I tried to find out exactly how many by doing a web search but only turned up finds of personal injury attorneys pleading for your business if you've been in a car accident. I think God needs a good lawyer. There are all these crackpots out there doing hateful things in God's name. I think God's lawyer should go after them for libel, slander, defamation of character and more. If you read any of God's books, you won't find God counseling people to harm the innocent. That is simply not God's desire. I think it was Lily Tomlin who noted that if you talk to God, that's called praying. But if God talks to you, that's schizophrenia. For anyone to claim that God has told them to do something contrary to God's will of love is nuts. I am asked on a very regular basis by lots of people how do deal with anxiety during these troubled times. So one answer is to keep a perspective. In 2000, there were 6,394,000 police reported motor vehicle crashes, an increase of 0.2 percent from 1999. 41,821 people were killed. 3,189,000 people were injured. An average of 115 persons died each day in 2000? one every 13 minutes. That is more enough than to fill a 747 jumbo jet every single week. Let me offer you a perspective on something else. I frequently get responses from folks - some in person and many by e-mail - about the value of our gatherings for you. I'm so glad. But listen to this: I used to have a play a game as a child. It was a game I used to play with my cousins. We called it "playing church." Yes, we also played "doctor" but my parents made us quit when my cousin tried to take out a neighbor child's appendix. Church was one of our favorite games. We would gather in my grandmother's living room where there was a grand piano and pick parts. Someone would be the "teacher" of the make-believe Sunday school class, someone would be the pianist, someone would be the song director, etc. Now, I promise you, I never had a sane/conscious desire to be a parish minister. But notice that is where, in part, where I've ended up. Just this week I had a memory of that childhood playtime and a realization that I'm living that dream. What that caused to occur in me is such a deep gratitude for you. If it weren't for you, I couldn't do this. No matter what happens in here in our times together, I am the one who is most deeply benefited. So I thank you so much that you make it possible for my unconscious dream to be true. So there is one principle right there is it not? What we visualize is what we realize. The principles I am trying to teach, the method of being I want to use in my life and present to you, are things I've been trying to get into my head and heart and hands for at least the past thirty years. They are so simple and yet we never fully master them. The good news is that we have the rest of our lives to do that - no matter how long or short that might be. I experience life in some of the same ways that I think you do too. For example, I frequently stray far off the path of what I teach. I assume you do too. I can fall for the culture's notion about security. You know, we begin to believe that there is something we can do to stay safe. My eye condition has been a great teacher for me at this point. One day out of the blue I began to have these flashers in my left eye. Each time I had surgery, I was confident I was on the other side of the difficulty. Surely, I thought, things would get back to normal. But the surgery failed. I had another one. It failed. Another one. Then two Sundays ago, more flashers. An emergency session with the surgeon on Monday revealed scar tissue forming on the retina causing the retina to bunch up in that place and thus tug at the edges of the retina risking more tears and a resulting detachment. I sat there dumbfounded as the surgeon informed me that there is nothing that can be done about this. Just wait and see what happens. It will either go away or it won't. Ah, the lesson of patience. Though I confess, I'm kind of tired of attending this particular class held by my eye. Mother Teresa once said, "I know God never gives me more than I can handle, but sometimes I wish He didn't have so much confidence in me." One of the ways that we can more successfully move through these days of our lives is to pay careful attention to the role of myth, magic and ritual in our lives. Every week across the street we act out a great ritual. And it itself is in the context of a great ritual and mythic story. We will begin, in a few weeks, this mythic story all over again - the first Sunday in Advent will lead us day by day all the way to the greatness of Easter morning and the Pentecost celebration that follows fifty days after that. We go over this myth year after year. Not because we don't know it but because we draw strength from participating in it. It doesn't change but our understanding of it does, our lives change, our circumstances change. Just so with the principles of Ordinary Life. If we don't have ways to remind us of the principles of Ordinary Life, we'll drift away and become very frightened or cynical or lost. In our society there are notions that function as gods that lead us far astray from who we really are and what life is really about. Money is one of our gods, isn't it? Status can be? And there are many others. Our task is to dethrone these things and learn how life really works and make what we learn help us create the life we want and want the life we have. We are not what we do. We are not what we have. Life is in our being. Another way of stating this is that we create the world we live in by our beliefs. The world-view we hold is responsible for the quality of our lives. We are responsible for the content of our lives. No terrorist is responsible for the content of my life. I am one hundred percent responsible. This is the key to released power. The understanding you have of your world is your religion. These are not comfortable teachings for us. Why is that? Well, the fundamental bottom line reason is that if we look at life as it is we have to face up to our death and that is just too much. Don't worry, I'm not going there - right now. For the moment, let's think about cause and effect and see if we can use this principle to help us live the principle of our having a moral obligation to be happy even though we are assaulted by news we don't want to hear about terrorist attacks, anthrax and all that jazz. The law of cause and effect means: This is this way because that is that way. Cause and effect means that everything is connected to everything. When you are working with this principle, it is critically important to practice non-judgment. Most of us have some notion of what it would mean to live heroically in the face of whatever life has to dish out to us. Right? We know of people like Helen Keller or Ann Frank who lived their lives in the midst of and in spite of difficult times. So, we know what heroic living looks like. But notice also how easy it is for us to fall off the path. When I was at Harvard there was a prayer we prayed: "Dear God, deliver me from the sin of intellectual pride - which, for your information means . . ." It is so easy to fall off the path. And, also notice, the consequences when we do. Let's look at some truths about life and how quickly and easily we can move away from them. For example: Life is a gift but we live as if we had to work to earn it. None of us is special but we live lives of intense competition. The only way you can change your life is at the consciousness level but we act like we can change it at the material level through what we have and/or do. Get this: What you are about is love. There is no way you can be about something else. You are created in the image of love. You can withhold love or distort it but you can't get away from it. I've been using the phrase "principle of equality" in my teachings with you lately. If we come at life, if we come at other nations, if we come at our relationships committed to inequality, we are not going to experience life. But we learn the principle of inequality early. One of you sent me this - "Just had to email you this before I forgot. "Today in the last service there was a little boy sitting behind me with his parents. He must have been about 4 or 5 yrs old. During the baptism, he says in a startled voice (trying to whisper... but not quite managing to): 'Oh my gosh! That is a real live baby up there! I didn't know they let babies into church. They don't know 'nuthin!' "I had to grin. If he only knew that is why the rest of us are here. ;-)" Often we try to practice our spiritual principles when it is comfortable and convenient for us. But when a tragedy strikes we revert to defensive and reactionary beliefs and behaviors. You cannot ride two horses with one behind. Otherwise you are going to get real sore. You will become known as what is called - a lost soul. I have found a ton of help in Buddhist psychology and practices. Whatever your religious beliefs are, I believe, this can be true for you too. One of the things I've learned by investigating this territory is that there are principles that accurately describe the way life works. If we know these and live them, we will be happier people. We will have more of the life we want. When, years ago, I first tried to translate these principles into my own life and language, the way I worded them was like this. 1. What we believe creates the world we live in. All that we accomplish with our lives is a direct result of our thoughts. We are what we think and our character is the complete sum of our thoughts. Individual responsibility for this must be absolute. This is the way Buddha put it - "The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, Born out of concern for all being." 2. By and large we get in life what we expect to get. 3. We have a tendency to attract into our lives those events and experiences that harmonize with out dominant belief systems. If I were to ask you to go into the next room and count all of the blue things you see, I'm sure you could do that. You could come back and report some number of your counting. But, then, if I were to ask you, "While you were in there, how many brown things did you see?" your report would be non-existent or not accurate because brown is not what you were looking for. This is called sorting. What do you sort for? We do this also by the questions we ask ourselves every morning as we are beginning our day. 4. What we dwell on grows in our experience. This says something about the importance of meditation and prayer. 5. You can hold only one thought at a time. If you don't like what is in your mind, replace it, substitute it with something else. This is the principle of substitution. 6. Then there is the principle of work or practice. I talked to the reporter about the importance of being present. She thought for a moment and said, "That's very hard to do. How do you learn to do it?" My response: "Like learning any other skill: You practice." I don't know a thing in the world worth doing that doesn't take practice and work. When the first astronauts made it to the moon and were walking about, one of them said, "This seems like old home week." What did that mean? It meant that they had practiced that walk so much in simulation that it seemed familiar to them. 7. Relaxation and play. This is one of the most important needs of the Self, of the soul. We are, in different many ways, to practice a "Sabbath" in our lives. So many of us don't. We just work, work, work. "Play," by the way, doesn't mean the competitive combat so many engage in and "rest" doesn't mean sleeping and napping. One of the biggest causes that keeps people from finding satisfaction in life is playing into the victim mentality. The victim mentality, simply defined, is that outlook or attitude that says, "My life is essentially at the mercy of vast powerful forces out there and beyond my control. Therefore, I am at the mercy of: - My history, my upbringing, my genes, my heritage. - My social class, my education (or lack of it), or my IQ (or lack of it.) - My parents, my teachers, or an invalid relative. - My mate, my partner. - My boss, my supervisor, my manager, or my co-workers. - The economy, the times we live in, the social structure, or our form of government. - The politicians, the large corporations, or the rich. - Some particular enemy, who is out to get me, and who has great power. The Victim Mentality ultimately discharges you from any responsibility for your life, since clearly what is happening to you is not your fault. I'm not saying there are no victims. Let a good hurricane occur around here and folks are made victims quickly. But there is a vast difference between being a victim and having a victim mentality. One means dealing heroically with what you have to deal with and the other means giving up. I believe each one of us always has more control over our lives than we think is the case. No matter how much of our life we see as unchangeable, there is always that part that is under our control and that we can work on to change. Even if it is only 2%, it is almost always more than we think. Although we work in some predictable ways, almost machine like, we're not machines. You can cut a machine off. What you believe, however, continually does something with the energy that is going through you. If you are afraid of losing your job, if you are afraid of losing your mate, if you are afraid there will never be a "Mr. not-so- wrong" for you, guess what? The universe is going to support you in having those be your life experiences. Here is something I have mentioned to you before but it fits again in this context. There is a risk we need to keep in our minds. We have parts of our lives we are not clear about. Affecting this lack of clarity are forces in our society, powerful forces, that are focused on us all the time. These are in the form of television, radio, newspapers, magazines, sales-persons, employers, relatives, and friends. They have many ideas about what we should be thinking. When we avoid making clear decisions about what is best for us, we tend to adopt the ideas of these other sources, without even being aware that we are doing it. It is like your being is a sponge. You can fill the sponge with love, forgiveness, peace, confidence, abundance, affirmation, gratitude, and joy. OR, we can leave the sponge partly dry and the world will fill it for us. That's why we need to practice a way that keeps the quality of life experience we want for ourselves in our consciousness. That's our choice. When we don't make it, someone else will make it for us. Okay. What might be a practical application of this? If these principles are true and if the ultimate nature of all that is is love, then, how are we to live? I believe we are more in alignment with the purpose for our lives when we are experiencing and expressing the following: Love, peace, forgiveness, confidence (hope), abundance, affirmation (faith), gratitude, and joy and happiness. Whatever your specific purpose is, these states of being fit your basic purpose in life. So, here is the process. First, we look around and notice what is. Second, we accept it - without judgment of any kind. This sometimes requires practice. The skill you are practicing here is forgiveness. Or, the principle of 100% responsibility. Until we learn to bring mindfulness to every aspect of our lives, a stance of mindfulness all the time, everywhere - we are in hell. If you wait for the circumstances of your life to change before you develop mindfulness, you'll never get there. We can easily fall into being dependent on others without even realizing it. It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared. But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?" "It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it's definitely going to be a very cold winter." The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?" "Absolutely," the man replied. "It's going to be one of the coldest winters ever." "How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked. The weatherman replied, "The Indians are collecting wood like crazy." Then, third, you practice experiencing and/or expressing one of the states of being that reflects your spiritual beliefs. Let me give you an example one of you offered me. Recently Dr. Bob Bell visited Istanbul. You might remember that he made comments in here about his visit to a mosque there. After returning to Houston, he wrote the following letter to their tour guide: "We want to thank you so much for your kindness, patience, charm, and wit while putting up with us. We arrived back in Houston, Texas, without incident on October 10th. "Our country continues to be traumatized and anxious. Now it is Anthrax that has us in a panic. We have had things too easy for too long over here. This may be God's wake up call to us and we are finding it difficult to accept. "In church this morning, we read the following from Paul's second letter to Timothy (New Testament - Christian Bible). This is a portion: 'For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.' "I think this applies to both of our faiths and I encourage you and all others to live your religion fully and with a burning devotion. Together we will defeat this thing and come out stronger and closer in our love for each other. We will not have another 'Crusade.' We ride together this time. May God/Allah/Yahweh richly bless us all." There is a rhythm to this dance. The first step is made as quickly as possible. The second may take a bit longer if there is homework to do. We want to make the third one last as long as possible. Think about it: If you learn to be present, the dance takes place all by itself. You are aware of the flowing feelings within you starting with love. I love so much about and within life. From that love flows a sense anguish and despair when I realize that I can't hold on to anything or anyone I love. That is followed by a sense of wonder and awe that I have been permitted to participate in any of it. What flows from that is a sense of victory and triumph. And from that a sense of joy. And from that joy a sense of awe at the wonder of it all. Which ends up leading me once again to love. Which causes the dance to start all over again. That's the flow. Our job is to learn to celebrate every aspect of it. Let me read you an embodiment of this in a recent message from the Hopi Elders: "You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered: Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your Truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader. This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. See who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we've been waiting for." The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation" No matter where you go this week, no matter what happens, remember this: You are carrying precious cargo. Watch your step. ====================================== Ordinary Life is a gathering that provides an opportunity to develop an enlightened heart and an awakened mind to the reality of the present moment. The gathering meets on Sunday mornings at 9:45 am in Fondren Hall at St. Paul's UMC - 5501 South Main, Houston, Texas and is taught by Dr. Bill Kerley. If you would like more information - Contact Bill Kerley - E-Mail - Bill@bkspeaks.com Web - www.bkspeaks.com Voice - 713-663-7771 Fax - 713-663-6418 Mail - 6300 West Loop South, Suite 480 Bellaire, TX 77401 ============================== You can access the archives of these newsletters by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ordinarylife You can add someone you know would be interested in receiving these on- line newsletters by sending that information to - Bill@bkspeaks.com I'll make sure they are added immediately! Or, they can subscribe themselves by sending an e-mail directly to Ordinarylife-subscribe@yahoogroups.com You can unsubscribe to this newsletter by sending an e-mail to ordinarylife-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ================================ The material in this on-line newsletter is copyrighted. It may be reproduced and printed elsewhere as long as it is not changed in any way and credit is given to this source. Your use of Yahoo! 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