News from the Unscripted Self

The highest form of human intelligence is to observe yourself without judgment.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Are you a Potato, an Egg, or Coffee Beans?

Puzzled, the girl inquired what she meant. Then, without saying a word the grandmother got a potato, an egg, and some coffee beans from the kitchen along with three pots of water. She put each item in a separate pot and put them on to boil. After some time she fished them out and remarked to her grand-daughter that they had all been changed in some way. The potato, which went in hard, came soft and mushy. The egg, with only a thin shell over its liquid content was now hard. They both had been affected by the water, one made soft the other hard. However, the difference with the coffee beans it changed its environment, both the water and the air around it, filling it with a beautiful aroma.

So which are you? Life will always throw a lot of crap our way, but it’s how we respond to it that defines us, that shapes our character. The ‘slings and arrows’ of life can break us, get us thinking nothing’s worth fighting for, leaving us feeling defeated and deplete. We want give up. When this happens we cave in to our own weakness, and like the potato, once firm, we are now pulpy and ‘soft in the middle’.

Or, as with so many, life can harden us. We learn wisdom in the wrong way, that life is about the survival of the fittest, and we must push our way to succeed regardless of who we step on. We become like flint, stiff, unbending, rigid. Mainly because we are afraid if we appear to be soft others will take advantage of us. When this happens our heart is closed to love and we are nothing but a hard-boiled egg.

Alternatively we can change the environment we find ourselves in. Each of us is gifted in his or her own way to change the world, to make it a better place, to leave the mark of kindness on it. Yes we will change, but that need not mean being broken or hardened. When we become lighter, freer, and move with grace and ease through life we change not only ourselves for the better, but others too.

So what are you going to be today: a potato, an egg, or some coffee beans?

Sometimes people worry that their prayers are not being answered, and they think God is not listening to them. But we can be asking the wrong question. Like the man who prayed fervently every night for God to end the war in his country. Then one night God appeared to him in a dream. The man asked again to end the war in his country. And God replied, ‘what war?’

All our thoughts are recycled. When you begin to notice what happens inside you as a result of believing a thought, such as, ‘I can never make enough money’, you realise you have to change something in you in order to believe that. You momentarily become a different person when you hold that thought. Now, what would it be like, in time, if you were to hold a really powerful thought about yourself?

Latest offering on the unscripted self

I’ve been reading A Course in Miracles again lately and thinking about the similarities and differences with traditional Christianity. Also about a sect known to us as the Gnostics, some of whose ideas were similar to acim. Also Plotinus? So I’m currently writing a mini-series on that. Don’t worry it won’t be too heavy or anything, but I think it will be insightful. Watch out for the first instalment coming very shortly.

Distant Healing

Happy reading,