ON PLANNING

Whooper Swan spoke:

Today, I want to suggest to you that people plan only because everybody else is busy planning and plan for no other reason.

That is a mouthful, as my mama said.

People respond rather forcefully when told by anyone, Oh, me? I do not plan my life. They feel threatened by such a person since they are always planning, a favorite skill, which might be their only skill, actually. 

That is another mouthful, Mama.

Think about it.

Say, I dream of a picnic I once attended and decide I want another picnic experience. I plan one. Right?  Imagine with me for a few moments the steps a picnic planner will likely follow. To us, now, such a way is seen to be a wise exercise. Correct? Takes time, though. Also, an investment of energy.  Also, an investment of personality in the nature of hope for a good picnic that brings about a feeling of being a good planner. Correct?

I want to ask a simple question. Why do people not just live letting life itself bring what will delight them, instead? At the beginning people did it that way because infants had no other way.  So, my second question is: Do we know that an infantile way is not up to our image of a proper standard for an adult? It is certain we abandoned that one.  Correct?  Why? Do any of us remember actually choosing to abandon the infantile way?

One of Sigmund Freud’s early pronouncements was that the infantile way must be abandoned.  He thought that the infant unrealistically assumes that whatever he needs will be delivered as if by magic. Mother taught him that by her motherly ways. Then, did she stop delivering gradually over time? Or, did what was needed from her by the infant alter more or less naturally? And Mother knew that? 

Finally, this I ask, Do we know that a divine power is not in place ready in every moment to deliver our adult needs and we are busy planning only because everybody else is busy planning, and since we know it, we believe nobody will come to my picnic unless I am connected to the world-wide planning machine and that would be disastrous?

From where did this fear of not having friends arise? And why are the best picnics referred to as Happenings? And, was Mother an agent of a divinity that does not abandon us?

Here is another mouthful:  I suggest you do not know but that if everyone of your plans should fail, it will not be the finest of all possible blessings. 

Ultimately, I say: you are already as happy as you are ever going to be. That is a mouthful and the best reason to cease the practice of planning for you only plan away joy.

Believers who play the local game of popular vice, which may include regular attendance at churches, synagogues, and temples or regular attendance at a school or a job, are blinded to it by belief and by belief alone. Belief is powerful, too much for us to overcome, except we find the courage inside ourselves to examine into it with a dedicated, piercing eye and a strength so great an answer to our quest has got to be found. The quest?  To find out for ourselves what is going on in the world we have created to serve.

What Nobody Knows

Some person has a problem. At the beginning he may well be excited at the struggle ahead of him and imagine how a victory will feel when he is done. He commits to the struggle. Unexpected help arises from many quarters. “We will win!” they shout. Something is watching all of this unfold from the outset and is aware of every detail as it happens. The person with the problem is unaware of the quiet, still observer but the observer is aware of the person with the problem and is that without which the person would not even exist to accept a challenge at all. The person who has a problem to solve feels a mandate to solve it and thereby bring about a change for the good. But he fails. 

Misery sets in. It feels such a familiar misery. How many times?

Alone, he realizes the mandate was actually to fail to solve a problem, and, by experiencing failure deeply, find that peace that is always with him; a peace without which one must endlessly strive for what cannot be attained for we have it already. The person who had a problem disappears. Nothing of it remains.  Life opens like a flower whose anonymity is its strength. Life is not being lived by a person. Any swan knows this. 

The human being shouts,

“Goodness does not need man. Man needs goodness. It is not to be that man will save the planet. All arises from what man calls blackness and back to it shall return bringing no persons with it.”

What in us that is not a person knows this? Pay attention.

I say tell them it is not AA  that is the Giver...it is Life itself!  And it is not any Religious Group either. Nor is it any national symbol writ upon a piece of paper with a seal.

And it's for everybody on equal terms. No one is excluded. And joyful fulfillment is the result of a real life...really lived. AA is a symbolic aid for calling a meeting of folks who want to have a better experience. Think of it like the torch in the hand of lady Liberty welcoming all the world to come. That's all. We can only point to what has always been so. Alcoholics 
tend to be desperate enough to listen is all. 

True Self has the answers for each one of us insofar as we remain in line with divinity's beam.

HASTEN YOUR OWN EVICTION

You have allowed yourself to become entangled in the blues.  

Pay close attention to the entanglement to hasten an eviction. 

But, do not tarry.  

You have allowed yourself to become entangled in the blues.  

Pay close attention to the entanglement to hasten an eviction. 

But, do not tarry.

For this task you will require a great deal of the deepest sensitivity of the kind only truly wild creatures carry

observing the entanglement of your plans up in blue to the point the pain is more than the boiling point in you, you shall un-der-stand…once again

observing the entanglement of your plans up in blue to the point the pain is more than the boiling point in you, you shall un-der-stand…once again

observing the entanglement of your plans up in blue to the point the pain is more than the boiling point in you, you shall un-der-stand…once again

whether you be or whether you be not… 

and beholding Parallel Heaven’s amazing similitude so grand you cannot withstand caterwauling gratitude 

hasten a sudden eviction…

You be taking nothing with you from the home of the blues, so,

before you go, nail up a notice with fiery fingers of conviction 

to any soul lost tonight in the sorrowful blues fearing eviction 

I be outta here, Blues… 

nail it up so tight it will never be forgot…whether I be or whether I be not?

Finding my feet in a new world. there is nothing to follow, nothing to keep, nothing to change.

There is a pitcher.  Everyone alive has such a pitcher.  A pitcher that something fills with precious fluid.  I keep pouring mine out on the ground, leaving me holding an empty pitcher in wonder.  The pitcher is refilled for me.  I do not know what the fluid is for.  I want to do something with it.  I pour it on the ground and wonder.  This has been going on for more than forty years.  I am no more aware of the purpose of the precious fluid today than I have ever been.  Still, the pitcher is refilled.  It is not refilled because of any merit on my part, I know.  I continue to pour mine out on the ground and stand holding an empty pitcher wondering what this has all been about.  This is my story.  And still the pitcher is refilled. 

 I have learned this much.  Each time the pitcher is refilled,  I can feel the fullness within it and that feels good, I know.  It is satisfying, I know.  It took a long time for me to understand this much.  I lived many years ignorant of the feeling of satisfied contentment available at such a trivial price and with so little required of me.  Those years were chaotic.  I lived in dread most of the time.  I was trying mightily to achieve some goal or other that might bring me satisfaction and peace.  Nothing I tried brought more than a fleeting feeling of excited pleasure that seemed always to dissolve even before the goal was reached into another faraway goal to be reached.  All the while,  this feeling of satisfaction was lying inside as a refilled pitcher of precious fluid, refilled for me time after time by some unknown source that must have been taking an interest in me even though I was pouring the precious fluid out on the ground.  

In truth, I have explored possible ways to use the precious fluid and none have seemed to be anything other than simply pouring it out on the ground and standing rather foolishly, embarrassed, in apologetic wonder.  I have heard of people who are able to do something worthy with their pitcher of precious fluid.  They use it to grow some lasting fruit trees that continue to produce good fruit.  I must admit I  do not have evidence of it.  Only stories. Whenever I have attempted to locate one of these people they elude me.  Like smoke they elude me.  So, I am left here holding a pitcher of precious fluid that has been refilled by grace without my deserving a drop of it and , not knowing what else to do,  am  pouring mine onto the ground to stand again in wonder.  How are you doing?