There's no end to tasks, challenges. But it's always better to face them head on, get them arranged in some logical order, then bing bing bang, work through them steadily till they're accomplished.
I'm like anyone else, sometimes, the things that can be postponed, let them go by for a while. But when the time is approaching when they need to be done, then to be goal- or task-oriented is, to me, the only way to live. Get them accomplished, 1 2 3 ...
The big worry is to sit here and have family trying to accomplished tasks, especially if I have some role in paying expenses, which happens once in a while, more often than it should. Anything could go wrong, like with renting moving trucks, getting leases filled out, getting rent paid, etc. There can be no end to it. But when an end, even a tentative end, arrives, it's a nice feeling. You did it!
Now it's evening. It's been a day like that, with my own tasks and those of family. I feel like a reluctant manager. I'd rather be on a desert island sometimes, but even then there'd be the various tasks related to survival. It's not all just drinking beer like on beer commercials.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, February 23, 2009
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Eckhart Tolle - Part 1
I took a nap today, and woke up with what I'm calling "interesting fears." Without saying everything about my existence and what's coming up (all quite benign), I get a few worries that creep up on me. So I'm busy being busy in my mind about that. It's dwelling on the future instead of the now, to use the little I know of Eckhart Tolle's vocabulary.
But after I wake up, and it's a nice, though blustery, Saturday afternoon, and it's a little warm, and I'm all alone except for the pets, and there's no sound, it's like a thought morass. A swamp up there with interesting places to slip in.
Using the word "interesting" two times like that is itself interesting, to me. Because I was listening to a CD lecture by this same Eckhart Tolle while laying down, willing to doze off, which happened. The CD -- I'll eventually listen to it again because I dozed off maybe 20 minutes into it -- was the first of a series of talks given at Findhorn Retreat. And he uses the word "interesting," right at the beginning, as what their time at Findhorn won't be. There's an audience there and they laugh. Now, since I have earbuds I can hear everything, I'm listening for the laughter of the audience. My mental picture of them is of people wanting to go along with what Eckhart has for them, yet also looking for the interesting. Hence, every little titter in the audience appears to be someone looking for a reason to stimulate an outburst of laughter from the others and an encouragement to Eckhart Tolle to say other funny things, thereby making it interesting.
But he says at the beginning it won't be interesting, and the reason exactly why that is is escaping me in part. Let me hack it out: because interesting means analysis, like analyzing an oak tree instead of being with the oak tree. But what's wrong with analysis? I guess it's a mental digging (future oriented) instead of a mental awareness (present oriented), thereby postponing the joy/stillness instead of being in the already-always-there stillness. The topic for the retreat, I think, is stillness.
Right at the beginning, Eckhart Tolle has this very low-key delivery, and I'm thinking, Yeah! But then it becomes more conventional a presentation. But like I said, I'm busy dozing off not too far into it, waking up once and it's over with, dozing back off, then waking up with "interesting fears." I might have exorcised some of them by writing this.
But after I wake up, and it's a nice, though blustery, Saturday afternoon, and it's a little warm, and I'm all alone except for the pets, and there's no sound, it's like a thought morass. A swamp up there with interesting places to slip in.
Using the word "interesting" two times like that is itself interesting, to me. Because I was listening to a CD lecture by this same Eckhart Tolle while laying down, willing to doze off, which happened. The CD -- I'll eventually listen to it again because I dozed off maybe 20 minutes into it -- was the first of a series of talks given at Findhorn Retreat. And he uses the word "interesting," right at the beginning, as what their time at Findhorn won't be. There's an audience there and they laugh. Now, since I have earbuds I can hear everything, I'm listening for the laughter of the audience. My mental picture of them is of people wanting to go along with what Eckhart has for them, yet also looking for the interesting. Hence, every little titter in the audience appears to be someone looking for a reason to stimulate an outburst of laughter from the others and an encouragement to Eckhart Tolle to say other funny things, thereby making it interesting.
But he says at the beginning it won't be interesting, and the reason exactly why that is is escaping me in part. Let me hack it out: because interesting means analysis, like analyzing an oak tree instead of being with the oak tree. But what's wrong with analysis? I guess it's a mental digging (future oriented) instead of a mental awareness (present oriented), thereby postponing the joy/stillness instead of being in the already-always-there stillness. The topic for the retreat, I think, is stillness.
Right at the beginning, Eckhart Tolle has this very low-key delivery, and I'm thinking, Yeah! But then it becomes more conventional a presentation. But like I said, I'm busy dozing off not too far into it, waking up once and it's over with, dozing back off, then waking up with "interesting fears." I might have exorcised some of them by writing this.
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