Tag: Elizabeth Lesser

• Extra Ordinary

  Elizabeth Lesser writes, “A good guide tries to get his or her personality out of the way. An inexperienced or self-interested guide does not.  A good guide is always turning the focus away from himself and back on the student or client, always reducing the work at hand to its most simple, personal, and intimate dimensions. Good guides are not miracle workers.  If they suggest that have special powers to heal you – or if the people around them prop them up as magicians – I would think twice about working with such teachers, counselors or therapists.  Oftentimes the most effective guides are what I call extra-ordinary people.  They are extraordinary healers because they are profoundly ordinary people who are comfortable with their humanness.  They are extra-ordinary.

   

   
  

  October 25, 2009

  Broken Open, Elizabeth Lesser, Extra Ordinary

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• Come Dance With Me!

  “Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all its many forms.  Dwell peacefully as change itself liberates all suffering sentient beings and brings them great joy.”

            Buddhist sutra

   

  Dwell peacefully in change.  We are certainly not taught to embrace change, to actually expect change, instead it seems that we struggle to stop change, always.

   

  The seasons are switching outside, and the leaves are changing color, leaving the living world for the world of decay.  As winter is being born, fall is dying.

   

  “If we had the patience and a high-powered microscope, we could sit and stare at our hands and watch the river of change flowing through our own bodies right now.  We could watch our cells changing and dying and being replaced, over and over and over.  From year to year, every one of our cells is replaced.  Literally, who we were yesterday is not who we are today.  Our skin is new every month, our liver every six weeks. When we inhale, we breathe in elements from other organisms to create new cells, and when we exhale, we send parts ourselves out into the atmosphere – into the living, breathing universe.  “All of us,” writes Deepak Chopra, “are much more like a river than anything frozen in time and space.” (Broken Open)

   

  Imagine, we are not frozen in time, yet how often do we feel we must capture this moment, take prisoner this age, or hold tighter this stage, instead of holding the value of change.

   

  The value in change is that we have to enjoy what we have when we have it, to treasure each morsel as it fleetingly rushes by, yet open to the new rushing in.

  Never holding to tightly or failing to appreciate what is here right now, and knowing when to release.

   

  That is a talent that babies and perhaps dogs have.

   

  I am slowly but surely learning how to do this, how to be at peace with change, to fully enjoy the moment and then let it go away.

   

  To be in the flow of change, instead of trying to be the stopper of change, if that were even possible!

   

  I think the river of life rushes by you, as you are the stopper person, that life simply goes around while you are standing still, it refuses to comply with your stopping.

   

  We can sit down and hold on to fall in our minds, but winter will come in anyway, tossing snow and frigid temperatures in our faces never asking our permission.

   

  I read a poem that describes God in four words, “Come dance with Me!”

   

  Come dance with me as winter, come dance with me as fall, come dance with me as summer, as youth, as old age, in sickness and in health, we join God in all His wonderful disguises.

   

  Come dance with Me!

   

   
  

   

   

  Not the God of Names,

  Nor the God of don’ts,

  Nor the God who ever does

  Anything weird,

  But the God who only knows four words

  And keeps repeating them, saying:

  “Come dance with Me.”

         Sufi poet Hafiz

   

   

  October 12, 2009

  Broken Open, changes, Deepak Chopra, Elizabeth Lesser, God, sufi poet Halfiz

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