Become all you can become by raising yourself higher on the Tree of Life

Circuitry. What you give and what you get back?

I am a Kiva lender. I circulate about 400-500 dollars, lend it, and lend it again. $25 a clip.

Kiva has been looking for find an angle to have more people be inspired to lend money.

After I lent another $25 from my seed money (I haven’t added any new money to Kiva for years now!) a video popped up.

In it an Indian woman shares that her fields were mortgaged and it was near impossible for her to make a living. Then she got a Kiva loan, got herself cows.

The cows give her five liters of milk a day she can sell.

This allows her to make a good living, and she has paid off the mortgage on her lands.

I started to cry.
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When you decide to do something for yourself… to grow…

Between two chairs I find myself fallen and sitting on the floor

I don’t know if you can recognize this situation, but my hunch is: you should.

Your attention is divided. Your intentions are divided. And NOTHING gets done.

It should be a daily concern… if it is not, you are probably in a rut.

What is a rut? A trench… you can either go forward or you can go backwards… Or stand still, hoping that it will give you a sense of being alive.

Whenever you add a new task, you have to go through this state: if you don’t, then you didn’t mean to add the task.
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More on joy, and how I am learning to have joy in my life

My first foray, my first venture into joy or joyous is trying to figure out what joy is. After all we don’t know necessarily what words mean when it comes to feelings… do we. We, children, watch and learn… but in a world where what you see is a mask, what you see does not represent a feeling accurately, because the person isn’t feeling it, because the person is faking it, the looks don’t help.

My hunch is that joy is fabricated with the intention to cause craving for it, to cause an acute sense of the lack of it.

Actually, when I watch people who enjoy something, they don’t smile. Smile is for the outside, social grease. They are deeply connected to something… The pictures of people enjoying something are fake… no enjoyment. I know, I feel what they feel… no joy. Joy interrupted.

Joy is inner, smile is outer. NOT joy.

Joy is a feeling that says something is enjoyed, and, surprisingly, it makes you want to expand…

So, as you see, my first access to joy is the word: enjoy.

You enjoy something, or you don’t. (Enjoy: take delight or pleasure in an activity or occasion).

When you don’t: it doesn’t mean it is NOT enjoyable, it means that YOU don’t take the time to enjoy it.

It happens to me with food, with travel, with music.
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Osho: Baby, my whole work is to confuse you!

I haven’t had many people say that I confuse them, ¹ probably because to say that is confrontational, and only about 4% of you is confrontational. Not that you don’t think that, but it takes courage and individuality to utter those words, and you don’t have it in you.

What would it take to say those words, without animosity, without anger, without pointing fingers? If you could solve that conundrum for yourself, life would be a lot better, wouldn’t it?

Until the age of about 40, my biggest issue was what to do with my anger. I made up a story, based on accidental coincidences, that my anger kills… and that I am a murderer. Obviously, with that cornerstone of a belief, it was impossible for me to express my anger in a socially acceptable way, so I suppressed, and then I exploded, and I repeated that pattern for 40 years, to my detriment.

I had ulcers, nervous breakdowns, depression, insomnia… not pleasant.

So, for me to learn to be confrontational, confronted and response, confronted and be well, calm and collected, was a huge shift in my being, in the right direction.

Anyway, here is a talk transcribed from Osho, that I think you’ll enjoy. ²

Baby, my whole work is to confuse you!

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Beingness and being, is there a difference?

Being: The state or quality of being being; existence is a tricky word, in every language I know. We use it as if it were cheap, inconsequential, but that misuse causes mischief.

When you say ‘I am depressed’ instead of ‘I feel depressed’, without knowing that there is a difference, you, unwittingly, practice self-definition.

You can feel a lot of things. Feelings and emotions have a normal tendency, that when not resisted, they move. They change. They morph from one feeling to another.
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Soul Work – are you doing it?

My students say that I am harsh. That I don’t see the best in people. That I’d catch more flies with honey…

Yeah, I know. Flies love honey… but I am looking to talk to people who aspire to go to the next level of human evolution, and those people are not flies. They are not scared away by reality: they know it will take taking a hard look at reality that is not pretty…

I am a realist. Rob Brezsny is an optimist… he has a lot of honey… yet, a realist finds the work in what he says, and loves it. ³

Rob Breszny writes: While walking in San Francisco, I passed the Pacific Heights Health Club. The sign out front said, “Birthday suits tailored here.” It was a witty reference to the idea that working out at a gym helps people get their naked bodies in good shape. I’d like to interpret the sign’s message in a different way, and apply it to you. The time is right for you to get back in touch with your raw, original self, and give it the care and the fuel and the treats it has been missing. Who did you start out to be? What does your soul’s blueprint say about who you must become? Home in on your source code and boost its signal.

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