Awakin.org

Waking up to Wisdom
In Stillness and Community

Previous Comments By 'unabuilder'

Effects of Adversity, by Eranda Jayawickreme

FaceBook  On Jul 16, 2015 Dan Duncan wrote:

When it is really adversity and not just inconvenience, I get through it one breath at a time.
And I remind myself of G.K. Chesterton's aphorism:
"Inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered, and adventure is inconvenience, rightly considered."

In today's economic downturn, my life is full of adventures, one breath at  a time.

 

What Do I Really Need Right Now?, by Sharon Salzberg

FaceBook  On Aug 12, 2013 Dan Duncan wrote:

Needs are quantifiable, answerable, where wants are an abyss.
Thus Mick Jagger, "...your debutante knows what you need, but I know what you want."
Do I really want to face that abyss? The abyss between you and me even larger than the abyss in my mind....

 

We Move in Infinite Space, by Rainer Maria Rilke

FaceBook  On Jun 7, 2013 Dan Duncan wrote:

 Rilke occupies a special place in my life's  journey.

When I was 19 and struggling to write poetry, I read his Letters To A Young Poet, and there was a question that he asked Kappus that brought me up short. I remember that Rilke's answer was something like this:

"You ask me whether you are a poet and I cannot tell you. But I will say this: You need to sit down with yourself and ask yourself very seriously if poetry is the most important activity in your life. Based on how you answer that question, you will be able to say whether or not you are a poet."

I closed the book, and after a long silence, from somewhere deep inside, my answer came.
"No, Poetry is not the most important thing in my life: LIVING is the most important thing!"

From that moment, I began to practice a life of poetry as exploration and not as a disguise.

 

You Are Not a Prisoner, by Andrew Cohen

FaceBook  On Aug 20, 2011 Dan Duncan wrote:

From Hymn Of Entry by Archimandrite Vaselios of Iviron Monastery, Mt Athos  ''Thou hast taken me captive with longing for thee, O Christ, and hast transformed me with Thy divine love. Burn up my sins with the fire of the Spirit, and count me worthy to take my fill of delight in Thee, that dancing with joy I may magnify both Thy Comings, O Lord who art good.'' —9th Ode—Transfiguration Canon ''You are not isolated and separated from other people and things. You are not stifled by the condemnation of living in time. Your life is not a glass of water which does not quench your thirst if you drink it, and goes bad if you do not. You are not a mechanically operating section of a limitless whole, not an individual in an anonymous multitude. The Author of life has shattered the bonds of purely mechanical existence. You are an organic part of a theanthropic mystery. You have a specific task, a small, minute task, which makes you a partaker in the whole. The mystery of life is summed up and worked out in your being, in your character. You are an image of God. You are of value not for what you have but for what you are and even more for what you are not; and you are a brother of the Son of God, of the Son of the Unknown and Unknowable, by Whom you are known. Thus we all enter into the feast of the firstborn. God, who is above all, may be recognized in the very texture of your person, in the structure of your being. You see Him dwelling within you. And you discern traces of Him in your insatiable thirst thirst for life and in your love. The fruit of the struggle to reach Him is the very vision of His face. The search for that vision is the fundamental principle of your being. "The Liturgy is not just a sermon. It is not something to be listened to or watched. The Liturgy never grows old. No one can say he has got to know it or got used to it because he has understood it once or once been carried away by the attraction of it. The faithful are not like s  See full.

From Hymn Of Entry by Archimandrite Vaselios of Iviron Monastery, Mt Athos

''Thou hast taken me captive with longing for thee, O Christ, and hast transformed me with Thy divine love. Burn up my sins with the fire of the Spirit, and count me worthy to take my fill of delight in Thee, that dancing with joy I may magnify both Thy Comings, O Lord who art good.''

—9th Ode—Transfiguration Canon

''You are not isolated and separated from other people and things. You are not stifled by the condemnation of living in time. Your life is not a glass of water which does not quench your thirst if you drink it, and goes bad if you do not. You are not a mechanically operating section of a limitless whole, not an individual in an anonymous multitude. The Author of life has shattered the bonds of purely mechanical existence. You are an organic part of a theanthropic mystery. You have a specific task, a small, minute task, which makes you a partaker in the whole. The mystery of life is summed up and worked out in your being, in your character. You are an image of God. You are of value not for what you have but for what you are and even more for what you are not; and you are a brother of the Son of God, of the Son of the Unknown and Unknowable, by Whom you are known. Thus we all enter into the feast of the firstborn. God, who is above all, may be recognized in the very texture of your person, in the structure of your being. You see Him dwelling within you. And you discern traces of Him in your insatiable thirst thirst for life and in your love. The fruit of the struggle to reach Him is the very vision of His face. The search for that vision is the fundamental principle of your being.

"The Liturgy is not just a sermon. It is not something to be listened to or watched. The Liturgy never grows old. No one can say he has got to know it or got used to it because he has understood it once or once been carried away by the attraction of it. The faithful are not like spectators or an audience following something that makes a greater or lesser emotioal impression on them. The faithful partake in the divine mystery. The mystery is celebrated in each of the faithful, in the whole of the liturgical community. We do not see Christ externally, we meet Him within us. Christ takes shape in us. The faithful become Christs by grace.

"What happens is a miraculous interpenetration by grace and an identification without confusion. The whole man, in body and in spirit, enters the unalloyed world of the uncreated grace of the Trinity. And at the same time he receives into himself Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The whole of God is offered to man. "He makes His home with Him." (John 14:23) and the whole man is offered to God: "Let us commend ourselves and each other and all our life unto Christ our God "

—Archimandrite  Vasilios

Hide full comment.

 

A 9-Year-Old's Hidden Self, by Jacob Needleman

FaceBook  On Jun 2, 2011 Dan Duncan wrote:

Why is it so hard to remember the taste of not knowing as a child?  If I'm lucky, a child's question may strike a chord of real communication such as you describe between Lobsang and Eve.
Is it enough to NOT prepare an answer to that innocence?

The faces of small children in supermarket shopping carts strike me with their seeming wonderment about all that surounds them.  They do not ask, they simply wonder, and occasionally I tune in to that wonder and am nourished by it.