(05-07-2009, 02:28 PM)Richard Wrote:Quote:Lorna wrote:
How much do you think you live the Law of One? For example, how much do you really see the creator in the people around you?
Quote:Yossarian wrote:
Seeking love in the moment - the most effective of all the exercises
Living in the now AND seeking the love in the moment …I’m working with these constantly now. Living in the now is coming easier, though I do forget about it as I get busier. Seeking the love in every moment requires me, most of the time, to stop what I’m doing and set my intent.
Seeing the creator in all things? I looked in the mirror the other day…and all I could think was…”Damn, I thought the creator would have been better looking”. Seriously though..this concept always requires me to stop, set my intent and ponder from that point on.
I sometimes, when driving, use mirroring techniques to try and feel unity…or “as one” with all the other drivers on the road. Actually, the morning and evening commute in heavy traffic is (and has been) my…I guess?…forge?…for learning patience and acceptance of others.
I avoided large metropolitan areas for years because I hated traffic. But financial opportunities lead me to the 4th largest city in the USA and all its associated traffic issues. And its been…enlightening, to say the least. Good for me also…making the choice has made me work with anger and impatience issues that I had been avoiding for decades.
If nothing else, living here….sure makes one believe that maybe there was a plan and everything is just as it should be right now.
Richard
Interesting you bring up the traffic angle, as I'm stuck in heavy urban traffic for two hours a day! With such a large part of my day spent so occupied, I do attempt to make good use of this time in the sense of knowing that I wouldn't be in this situation if there weren't learn/teach potential here.
As for investing myself with seeing others as self, it's not hard to put myself in the driver's seat of the others on the road. Let's face it - we all would rather the journey be shorter than longer, and yet we're all in a queue, as in a bank line up. I've never seen anyone attempt to jump the queue in a bank, yet on the road, we are privy to some common yet dastardly acts of 'cutting', as it were.
It may be that in traffic, we're all more in touch with some more primal aspects of ourselves, in the sense of what we do when there's little chance of having to answer face to face with someone, as in cutting up the line in a bank. I find that more often than not, those who cut me off in traffic tend to stare straight ahead, not countenancing my 'personhood' by finding my eye. In traffic, you can more openly show your true colours, not having to answer for your transgressions; and this makes the whole traffic thing an interesting laboratory for interaction, almost as in an expose of human behavior minus social paradigms of learned social politeness.
I have driven for many years, and know of my culpability in this regard; and yet more recently am realizing the value of this particular forum of learning and my continuing efforts to see myself in the faceless drivers that I encounter on the road, beyond the sense of having to answer for my driving transgressions, and trying to get past the 'not having to answer', faceless aspect that would see me going service to self, in trying to cut, weave, and value my time more than the other fellow.
A lesson for me here, in attempting to make the most of my time on the road - as we're all kinda different versions of the same entity, and true kindness and unconditional love for our other selves is not lessened by lack of face to face culpability. I do attempt to make the most of this peculiar state of affairs to practice love unconditioned by the relativistic aspect of not having to personally answer for my driving habits face to face, and make the most of being polite on the road, even if Joe Charger feels he needs to bump bumpers with me to shave two seconds off his homing time.
That's what he needs to do, so it's up to me to let him pass, and without guile, proceed with the knowledge that this is his right; and my right is to relinquish the urge to absorb his emotions, and let him thru. He is me in another state of being, and so I continue to find that the road is a powerful catalyst and an ongoing challenge to love, in a powerful and concentrated sense.
The road continues to offer lessons in regard to humanity, removed from times in which social mores have dictated more of a 'polite' surface veneer of expected behaviour, and pausing to let someone in to traffic, or simply allowing drivers into the stream of traffic, just because it's the right thing to do, multiplies the potential of this being seen and replicated by other drivers. I might get home a few seconds later, but the value of applying the LOO here is for me very powerful application of my time spent on the road. Mark