The Fair Path

The Fair Path

Have you ever been alone in a crowd before?

More precisely, I should ask, have you ever felt alone in a crowd? A buzz all around that somehow goes past or around you, never quite sinking in. Smiles, conversations, jokes, eye contact – that never reach you. You feel invisible at best – shunned at worst.

You may want to run, but there is nowhere to go.

You must move away from this uncomfortable state. There must be a change.

There are two possible roads ahead.

You feel like a boulder rolling down a hill when you come to a fork. All the difference is ahead.

One path is within. The other path is without.

One option is to move outwards. To reach out. To force the situation. To attempt to becoming a part of without the need for an invitation. To take a risk. Stepping out from oneself. To extend a hand, an opinion, a thought – with the knowledge that it may be turned away from, shunned, unwanted, rejected. To take the risk of being a fool, a busy body, obnoxious. The geek trying to break into the click. To expand the bubble around yourself to include others. To open up and be vulnerable. To risk appearing stupid or a social misfit. Trying to gain friendship at the possible consequence of garnering distain.

The reward for this path is you may become part of the buzz. One with the crowd. Known and no longer invisible.

The possible downside is that you are no longer invisible and now all your flaws and awkwardness is out in the open for all to see. Perhaps you don’t fit in and never will. Perhaps being invisible is the best you can do, the most you can hope for.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." – Abraham Lincoln.

Then there is the other path. The other direction. Instead of turning outwards in the hope of a connection, you can go inwards. Turning away from the trappings of the outside world. Moving toward self. To focus your attention to what’s inside. Your feelings and thoughts. To delve into your beliefs and emotions, to circle downwards deep into your personal cave. Trying to find you center and what makes you tick. What makes you unique. Searching for love of self and a deep inner respect. To find that place of knowing, that space of oneness. To seek the stillness, to explore through meditation.

The reward for this path, this direction, is pure radiance of being. Knowing that nothing can really hurt your pure essence. You are all. You will find that needs are merely flights of fantasy that we create out of the nothingness of fear. All is within and all is love.

The downside of this path is that sometimes when we go within we can spiral down and around until it becomes a narcissistic exercise. Self-worth somehow turns into self-importance. "We are one" becomes we are the one.

Sometimes seeing the beauty, weakness, and perfection in another is also the quickest way to seeing it within. Yes, somehow seeing the weakness in ourselves and in others becomes important. For it is only when we can see and come to terms with weakness and realize that they are just blocks, barriers to cover perfection. All weaknesses melt away in the light of true examination. Many times this is easier to see in others than in ourselves. Deep secrets become antidotes when the weight of darkness is lifted off.

Many times it is easier to move beyond judgment toward another than it is to do the same for ourselves.

So in the end I believe it’s the contemplative blend of reflective searching within and the reaching out, and shining out of our light towards the outside world in the hopes of connection that is our most beneficial and should be our ultimate goal.

Understanding ourselves and understanding others is a chicken or egg type of scenario.

Instead of asking which came, or should come, first – perhaps the real road to enlightenment comes from the realization that one cannot survive without the other. For if all is truly one… then there is no difference.

                                                           Sincerely signing off,

 

                                                                                             ò im Uhr

P.S. Again I am always playing the middleman. Walking the fence. Looking for that middle path. I usually end up in the ditch of the embankment that separates the two paths…

Ken Wilber

                                  Spiritual Path

  

                                                                         Path of thorns

Pandora's Path

Windows to the Soul

Windows of the Soul

Windows of the Soul

Windows. I have always loved windows. Standing in one atmosphere, gazing out at another environment that may be totally different. Removed, unconnected. Like looking out at a blizzard from a cozy warm home, the totally white frozen obliteration contrasting to the warmth and varied colors within. A thin, clear membrane separating you from frostbite. A thin clear line between Nevada and Alaska. It’s like looking at an historic painting that you feel so distant from – like instead of gazing at another time, you are looking into another dimension.

Sometimes when I’m depressed I can gaze out a window and imagine another life. It’s always nice to put glass between your pane [sic].

Just as children growing up strive to separate themselves from grownups, so we in general as humans are prone to feel the need to separate ourselves from history. Denying past errors. Maybe that’s why windows dominate today’s society, since we like separation, with windows we can at least be conscious of the division and pretend to care. (Kind of like seeing starving third world children on television and feeling compelled to send off a dollar or two to alleviate our guilt, pretending that we're not separated from their blight.) We air condition against the warmth outside, just as we heat when it is cold outside. Man – always trying to be separate from, trying to change reality. Never satisfied with the way things are.

For it is the change that always stands out. The difference is what’s important. If almost all birds were either blue or red, I’m sure that it would be the brown one’s that we considered beautiful.

We climb mountains with great delight in being able to look down into valleys. We live in the valley in order to have a view of the majestic mountains.

And it is with the help of windows that make all this so obvious. Windows let us see our separation, make us aware of the modifications we have made. Windows are constant reminders of man’s attempt to turn reality up-side-down.

Windows are barriers that at least let light get through so that we can fool ourselves into thinking there is no separation. Thus we can say, “I live in Moscow” or “I live in Cleveland” or “I live in Chambly,” instead of “I live in a 70 degree heated/air-conditioned bubble – just like you and most everybody else.”

We play with reality until reality loses it’s meaning. Is reality the inside of the cage or the world outside? It depends on which side one has his perspective from. Whether they are bars of steel or piled up bars of gold, poor are affected as well as the wealthy - as your personal prison can be from theft as well as riches. Money can separate us as it stacks up around us forming an inpenitratible barrier that no one can reach through. Seclusion can be our own private jail. The rich as well as the poor can experience alienation from society. Lock me away, or shun me. Observe me only through windows. Keep your distance! Not like a lion in a cage, but more that of a fish in an aquarium. You could never truly know my world. My glass separates universes, dimensions. My glass is a bubble that surrounds me as I float in and out of your reality.

It is sometimes said that separation is an illusion – but in reality anything and everything but separation is the illusion. Each object, each person, is made up of individual cells. Each cell in your body has as much connection to each other as do the planets in a solar system.

Space. Space is the truth. There is space between everything. The only connection between us is space. The Universe is essentionally empty. It is a vacuum by any standard. Even a pane of glass is not really solid. A neutrino passing through a window has a very small chance of colliding with any molecule in the glass – most assuredly it will pass right through without any effect. It would be almost impossible for it to strike anything.

Although you can see a completely different world outside your window, you have little chance of having any effect on it. Of all the animals on Earth it’s the human beings who are known as the creators on the planet, always building things, but in actuality our creations are small and usually temporary – just waiting for entropy to overtake them. As the debate rages on whether we are destroying the planet I think that we are locked in a perspective that is far from reality. I’m not sure we are as of yet able to destroy the Earth, we are only able to change it – possibly destroying the atmosphere and any possible living conditions. But the Earth, in one form or another, will survive. So the only thing we would probably be destroying is ourselves, along with a few billion animals. I think that long after we’re gone the Earth will repair itself. Maybe then the next incarnation of life will get it right.

Maybe we’re just like microbes in a Petri dish. The experiment of life on this planet may have passed its half-life. Maybe the scientist running this experiment has as much feelings for us as we do for mold spores. Possibly we are just a little experiment in filling up some space. We take up about as much space in the Universe as we do time in it’s history. We would not even register as a blip on the radar screen. We are dandruff on the head of the Universe, exaggerating our self worth. Is it man’s deterrent or his blessing to be so self-centered? Man’s ego is what has caused him to expand beyond any reasonable measure. In this microcosm, man is king. Man’s inflated self-importance is what makes him rise above the other microbes in the Petri dish.

The ultimate question is whether he can rise up enough through his own compost to really communicate with the scientist running this experiment and possible save himself with something more than complaints or simple pleas of help.

                                                                                    éim Uhr

P.S.   It is said that a millennium is just a moment to the Universe. Do you want to give me a moment to see if I can unstick this widow?

The eyes have it. [sic]

which window video is the best??? - let me know!

Window1                                   Window2

Window3

W I N D O W S

A Light Beyond

A    L I G H T   B E Y O N D

Endings always come to fast. Indeed, I've heard it said before, but up until now I have never believed it. Throughout my life I have experienced that in most of my relationships, endings don't come fast enough to suit me. I have always pushed to reach conclusions, in movies, especially books, and even in relationships. But as I sit where I have sat for the past twelve hours, only the direction I'm facing having changed, alone, through a long night, I think about endings corning too fast. Endings always come at last, maybe that's why they seem to come too fast. If they are to truly come at last, then once you have an ending it has to be the end, there is nothing more. It seems the reason I have never before feared endings, is because I always assumed there would be more. After a movie ends, just take a stroll down to the next theatre and see Rambo #12. After turning the last page of a book, picking up another and starting on page one. After saying good-bye to a temporary friend, although they never seem to catch on to this fact until it's too late and they wind up hurt, saying hello to a new one.

But what if this is the last movie to be made? What if after this book I find that there are no others? What if the last girl I have said good-bye to, is also the last one I will ever say hello to. The word "end" never meant the same thing to me as it did to other people. This is a realistic approach, but is it the better? Have I been living my life to the fullest? I may be taking too many things for granted. Is it truly living if you don't die with every flower as the cool winter wind cuts through your petals?

I have been living like I know that I'll always be living. But all things must pass. Once I did believe that endings would come and go, flowers will die and grow, precipitation turns from rain to snow. But now as I sit here in this field alone, I'm not so sure I know. What page are the answers on? Although I finish the book, will I ever be given a change to go back and reread? Those pages I skipped over may be important…

I watched the sun set, hours ago. But time is nothing but what my memory makes it out to be. Did this memory ever really exist, or is it something that my brain manufactures just to make sense of the present? Do the people around me really exist, or do they just represent pages in my book, with no lives of their own, just waiting for me to read? Once I leave my friends, do they really do the things they say they do? Or does my mind just make them say that to fulfill the need I have to make them appear that they are real? Do other people really form opinions about me, or do I just think they do, pretending that they have any thoughts? Is this just a fail-safe system my mind has worked out to keep me sane? Am I alone?

It can be pretty hard to check your sanity when you're not sure if you're already insane. Is it the rest of the world that's crazy? Every person must feel that they are the only ones who is truly sane in this world, and those that don't feel this way are the ones locked up in the asylums.

As I sit here, waiting, in the grass, legs crossed, I wonder if we each don't, in our minds, build four convenient walls around ourselves. Forever safe, in our individual, custom-made, asylums.

The sky is much lighter than it was just an hour ago. The stars, already starting to fade, are completely blocked by a cloud that drifts overhead. It's a fluffy, average-size summer cumulus cloud, and for a moment I wish that I too were floating, unaware of time, with it.

But things are not always what they seem. The looks of this cloud are deceiving as I know that it weighs at least 550 tons.

So here I sit, expecting nothing except what I expected from the start.

I catch a last glimpse of the moon hanging in the sky, as it in many ways represents the opposite of the sun. The moon, slow and cold, while the sun is fast and hot.

Endings always come too fast. The sun, at first peeks over the horizon, then bursts into the now bright sky. Though its warmth seems immediate, it is not enough to dry a tear from my cheek.

Endings always come at last.

Though a new day is beginning, what can be said of tomorrow?

There's a fine line between the darkness and the dawn…

                                                             Lastingly True,

      èim  Uhr

P.S. Time doesn't pass too fast. It’s all relative. For along

        the Earth's equator, dawn arrives at 1,000 m.p.h.

        But along the moons equator, it comes at only

        10 M.P.H. — slow enough for a man on

        bicycle to keep up with it.

Sane?                    More craziness 

                          Many good Crazy songs!