Some thoughts on affecting change, etc.
If I say I want to change lives I’m almost superficially supposing life is not change already.
Further, to say one’s life should be changed is to assume the change already happening [naturally] is not good enough.
It is also to say that I know what one ought to do, better than he or she knows what to do, for him or herself.
In having these thoughts or feelings – although unspoken – they’re aired, befalling innocent others to whom they’re directed;
Subtle, yet undeniable, our thinking seems inextricably part and parcel with our acts: if we think we know what’s right for another, we will cease to listen to the current song while with them, and dancing will die;
And the other with whom we share this exchange, will feel this. We will with lack of thought at once be authoritarianistic, our energy a crushing blow to the possibility of flow – even though we certainly may hate feeling oppressed ourselves. How silly!
No one, no thing, can be helped by sticking myself with dirty hands into its waters. No one can be pushed into naturalness – because any nature wrestled with, is not being let.
Maybe, just taking my hands away from messing with what’s unfolding, I can learn to watch and see: alive, isn’t this all quite wonderful?
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim, you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float
~Alan Watts
Learning not grown of curiosity seems to shrivel. I tell myself again: “Get out of the way of trying to teach! Let attention come to life from he or she who wonders enough to attend!” And if not, then let it be not!!
It is so plain to me, that to inject my own insecurity – of thinking I need to be better than the change of life that happens to us even when sleeping (or when sitting here) – is ignorant at best and rotten at worst.
To rush around and put out into the world this opinionation –
of “you can get better” –
rubbish. Can I wash my hands of this now?!
“Better”?
Better than what?!
Than this?!?!
I am maybe only adding my dirty laundry of unacceptance,
to a bowl of people [in this world]
who appear to be learning to be helpless
and feeling less than [for no good reason!].
“It’s never the wrong time
to do the right thing,”
a good friend of ours is fond of saying;
and so too, tis time
now as ever
to learn
that no one knows but you
what’s right for you,
nor how great it is,
to be a part
of this.
…there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.
~Alan Watts