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Thought of the Week Archives
May 1998

May 3

The fishing net is used to catch fish; let us have the fish and forget the net. The snare is used to catch rabits; let us have the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are used to convey ideas; let us have the ideas and forget the words 
 
Chuang Tzu

Works of Chuang Tzu
 
Note: Chuang Tzu was a Taoist Chinese philosopher who lived about 300 B.C.

May 10

Frustration

      There is a catch in the creative process. Things don't always happen as planned. An unanticipated challenge almost invariable trips you up, and you feel as if you've either temporarily lost sight of your goal or even fallen into a bottomless pit. Sometimes the situation may seem hopeless. 
      However, this very challenge is a catalyst for your true creativity, because it forces you to find an alternative approach and discover your talents and strengths, which wait in reserve for emergency use. This is the creative process. Do not make the mistake of giving up on your aspiration if you encounter this impass. 

Lorna Catford, Ph.D. & Michael Ray, Ph. D. 
The Path of the Everyday Hero

May 17

          I have set forth my basic thesis -- that myths are a function of nature as well as of culture, and as necessary to the balanced maturation of the human psyche as is nourishment to the body.... viewed apart from the uses to which they have been applied in the social provinces of human life, they may be recognized in themselves as natural phenomena, opening backward to mystery -- like trees, like hills, or like mountain streams -- antecedent (like the wood of trees) the the "meanings" that have been given them and the uses to which they have been put.
          What is the "meaning" of a tree? of a butterfly? of the birth of a child? or of the universe? What is the "meaning" of the song of a rushing stream? Such wonders simply are. They are antecedent to meaning, though "meanings" may be read into them. They are, as the Buddhists say, tathagata, "thus come," the Buddha himself being known as the Tathagata, "The One Thus Come."; and all things, we are told, are "Buddha things." So, likewise, are the images of myth, which open like flowers to the conscious mind's amazement and may then be searched to the root for "meaning," as well as arranged to serve practical ends. 
Joseph Campbell 
The Flight of the Wild Gander

May 24

          Like all great spiritual Masters, Jesus taught one thing only: presence. Ultimate reality, the luminous, compassionate intelligence of the universe, is not somewhere else, in some heaven light years away. It didn't manifest itself any more fully to Abraham or Moses than to us, nor will it be any more present to some Messiah at the far end of time. it is always right here, right now. That is what the Bible means when it says that God's True name is I am. 
... 
          When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he was not prophesying about some easy, danger-free perfection that will someday appear. He was talking about a state of being, a way of living at ease among the joys and sorrows of our world. It is possible, he said, to be as simple and beautiful as the birds of the sky or the lilies of the field, who are always within the eternal Now. This state of being is not something alien or mystical. We don't need to learn it. It is already ours. Most of us lose it as we grow up and become self-conscious, but it doesn't disappear forever; it is always there to be reclaimed, though we have to search hard in order to find it. The rich especially have a hard time reentering this state of being; they are so possessed by their possessions, so entrenched in their social power, that it is almost impossible for them to let go. Not that it is easy for any of us. But if we need reminding, we can always sit at the feet of our young children. They, because they haven't yet developed a firm sense of past and future, accept the infinite abundance of the present with all their hearts, in complete trust. Entering the kingdom of God means feeling, as if we were floating in the womb of the universe, that we are being taken care of, always, at every moment. 

Stephen Mitchell 
The Gospel According to Jesus

Comment �

by Reg Harris
This is perhaps the quest of the spiritual Journey (or even the ultimate quest of all journeys in life): a "re-linking" with the mystery, with the unknowable void from which life springs and to which it returns. The word "religion," as a matter of fact, means literally "re-link" or "link back" (re- = back, again + ligio = link). The linking cannot be made logically, through the senses, because the senses restrict our view of the universe to our brain's translations or interpretations of light waves, sound waves, and so on. The linking must be an experience.
It seems to me that one of the great goals of the Journey is to learn to trust: to trust the universe, to trust the flow of life, to trust in the natural balance and harmony of existence. Ultimately, journeys seem to lead us away from the obsession with planning and control, with a fixation on the future, with desires and preconceptions.
Like Lao Tzu, Buddha, and other great thinkers before him, Jesus understood. As he said in the Gospel of Thomas, "The Kingdom of the Father is already spread out over the earth, but people don't see it."
He also knew the importance of the journey to call forth our own understanding and awareness. "If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you." By accepting the call, we experience the positive side of the Journey, and we grow. By refusing or resisting the call, we experience the negative side of the Journey, and we risk wasting away.
The ultimate journey is to fully experience, in the present, the joy and sorrow of life now and to bring out that the godhead that is the core of being for each of us. 

May 31

Perhaps the open nature of quantum physics is related to a certain willingness of many quantum physicists to tolerate parados and ambiguity in their own lives. Neils Bohr proposed the principle of complementarity, by which particles become waves and vice versa, depending upon how they are observed. He carried into his daily life the belief that human situations likewise have opposite and complementary sides. In an interview, he once recalled discovering that one of his children had done something inexcusable. He found himself, however, unable to inflict the appropriate punishment. It was then that he realized that "you cannot know somebody at the same time in the light of love and in the light of justice." Instead, you must choose the context in which you will know another human being: the context of love if you are, for example, a father or mother, or the contet of justice if you are, for instance, a judge in a courtroom. You will know one of two different persons depending upon which you choose.
Allan Combs and Mark Holland

Synchronicity: Science, Myth and the Trickster


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