The Truth is: We are all Graduating

Drum roll!

Cue the graduation song aka Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1

And now we march toward the next door, next bridge, the next stage

All these sleepless nights, these million things per second invading our minds, these mountains of documents to submit, documents to prepare, documents to draft, these are the signs, we are all doing a collective 'graduation'

We are finally in the last stage of studies in different fields and finally we are getting all these checklists and schedules for the incoming rite of passage for all of us.

We are in graduation phase

The past is done we have submitted the last needed document, we defended our thesis, we have finished the thesis paper and incorporated the recommendation, the suggestions and the next part of our studies, hence we are now in the preparation part for the grand move up stage, the graduation!

Some of us will be so busy making different versions of our CV for different purposes, catering them to the needed qualifications in the field: there will be for admin, for writing, for creative purposes, for higher education learning, for fellowships, for internships, etc. These are the next steps, we follow the step as we follow the path of our direction.

The mountain/universe/ocean we came from was not an easy terrain, path, but we have made it and now the next step requires of us to be stronger, to be ready, to cultivate and to remember wisdom and compassion every single moment. We are like ants who aspire to climb the Himalayas, as my Master has explained tirelessly, every single day for the last 50 plus years.

Master said earlier, we follow the path by lifting one foot and then stepping forward. Then one foot lift and then forward. Lift then forward, again and again.

We must be present as we go through the process of graduation and after the rite of passage, a new life will begin, just follow the direction, follow the map, follow the teachings.

Moods #5

 

got this image from here

This image is so interesting, Rodin's the Thinking man is in the middle ground of this spread. If you can look at the foreground, we can see the different armies taking charge to attack a territory. We can also see an image of the Great Wall of China, believed to be one of the best defense wall ever built by men, aside from the wall built around Constantinople. Anyways, this image evoked in me what I have been thinking about for a while now, most of the history of great walls ended in its failure to protect what's inside it. Too bad for the institution and for the civilization contained within it. But then, every ending will always have a new beginning. Let's wait and see if there will be a new regeneration after the fall of institution/civilization. But in the mean time, let's lament the reality of the fall.

This is why I don't believe in the power of institutions over our individual personal lives.

Institutions rise and fall, it is organic because it depends largely on the people and their trends in a given time period. And because it is organic, it is continually changing, transforming, developing, getting destroyed, until it annihilates. Then another system will take over, and we will start the cycle again. If we really want institutions lording over our lives, then it will really take a lot of hard work from the people it purports to govern. The people must be relentlessly vigilant and must take an active position in shaping the institution, but do we have that energy every single day to do that? Eventually, if we want to follow this logic, the people will elect councils to be the ones to dedicate their lives in the shaping of ever changing institutions. These people who will populate the council must be wise, ready to give their all to their duty, somehow removed from the humdrum of every day life. Just like how Plato had designed the stratification in society through his treatises. There will be philosopher-rulers, there will be the artists and the business people, and then there will be armies, well we must read The Republic again to get the gist of this.

Anyways, all I am saying in this post is that we are responsible in living our own lives but we are also part of the human population so we also have a duty to our society. And as we face all kinds of destruction, natural, societal, governmental in our everyday lives now, isn't it time for us to face the reality and scrap the old institutions because the earlier we start doing it, the better the chance to build a stronger foundation in our lifetimes (we still have the fresh despair of how the old one is painfully inconvenient, let us use the pain to imagine a better one now). Of course, in reality it will take many decades for it to become deeply entrenched in our lives, I may not be even here when it starts to take root, but we have to start somewhere and isn't it the right time to do it now?

We will find a place where there's room to grow

We've Only just Begun performed by The Carpenters

Sharing horizons that are new to us
Watching the signs along the way
Talkin' it over, just the two of us
Workin' together day to day
Together

And when the evening comes, we smile
So much of life ahead
We'll find a place where there's room to grow
And yes, we've just begun

Footsteps in the sea

And crying is all I can do to battle sadness.

Embracing peace

Beginners

Denise Levertov

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea--“


But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
-- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
-- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet--
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

Managing the unknowable

Lesson for today: Trust intuition and learn to review and revise.

When waking up

What to Remember When Waking
~David White~

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

The truth of the moment

I am committed to RESEARCH.