Reflections

Light seeking light, doth light of light beguile ~Shakespeare, Love's Labours Lost We are seekers of the light!  For guidance, warmth, purpose and direction, we long for the light and are attracted to it. But sometimes, for lack of vision, we cannot see the very thing dividing us from it. Like the poor fly illustrated here, we can get stuck on a window and die there, headed for freedom but never leaving our self-made prison. This is denial.  Like an  inivisible wall (or window) separating us from what we seek, we are drawn to the light without seeing what is literally right in front of our faces. We refuse to try another route, get away, go around... exhausting ourselves by ignoring what our pain sensors are telling us.  It doesn't work. Then there is false light, artifical sources of light that throw lightbeams in every direction, confusing those of us who are phototaxic, that is, who are oriented to light, which would be all of us.  We become like tho...

Metanoia is a transformative change of heart.  The term suggests repudiation, change of mind, repentance, conversion and atonement. ~ Wikipedia There's an AA riddle that asks: If there are three frogs on a log and two decide to jump, how many are left on the log?  The answer of course is three, because they only  decided . (They never jumped). A lot of people I know, including myself, get trapped in self-destructive habits. They know what to do but don't do it.  They don't even  feel like doing it, let alone take that leap of faith. In order to break the cycle of passivity, action is clearly required. But where do you get the courage?  How do you go from head to heart?  They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, but I think it's  through his feet . In Seligman's experiments on learned helplessness , a group of dogs was yoked to another group learning how to avoid electrical shocks.  The yoked group received sho...

My phoenix long ago secured His nest in sky-vault's cope;  In the body's cage immured He is weary of life's hope ~ Hafiz I met a retired woman yesterday who finally, after years of toxic relationships with exes, parents, siblings and peers- it began in primary school when she was bullied- said to me with a great sigh of relief, "I've finally woken up; I'm out of La La Land, and I'm never going back." She was a serial victim, not due to weakness or so-called "co-dependency" needs... but due to, as she put it, "dangerous naivety" or as I like to call it: pathological trust. She had an idealism and hope that just wouldn't die; a good heart and misplaced faith which led her to place her trust time and again in the wrong people and situations.  Yes the roots of her poor judgment went back to early childhood. She'd been somewhat neglected by absent and hypercritical parents.  But she was not particulalry needy or depe...