September 20, 2004
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TUESDAY BOOKGrace and Grit – Ken Wilber
A friend of mine whose daughter is a survivor attended yesterday’s breast cancer Race for the Cure here in PDX and reported a turnout of at least 37,000. Hopefully, this will contribute to the eventual demise of this lethal disease.
After the initial diagnosis, surgery, and therapy, Treya entered a period of intense meditation. Ken Wilber has this to say about meditation:
…I would like to emphasize that meditation itself is, and always has been, a spiritual practice. Meditation, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, or Muslim, was invented as a way for the soul to venture inward, there ultimately to find a supreme identity with Godhead. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within”–and meditation, from the very beginning, has been the royal road to that Kingdom. Whatever else it does, and it does many beneficial things, meditation is first and foremost a search for the God within.I would say that meditation is spiritual, but not religious. Spiritual has to do with actual experience, not mere beliefs; with God as the Ground of Being, not a cosmic Daddy figure; with awakening to one’s true Self, not praying for one’s little self; with the disciplining of awareness, not preachy and churchy moralisms about drinking and smoking and sexing; with Spirit found in everyone’s Heart, not anything done in this or that church. Mathatma Gandhi is spiritual; Oral Roberts is religious. Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Albert Schweitzer, Emerson and Thoreau, Saint Teresa of Avila, Dame Julian of Norwich, William James–spiritual. Billy Graham, Archibishop Sheen, Robert Schuller, Pat Robertson, Cardinal O’Connor–religious.
Meditation, then is not so much a part of this or that particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all humankind–an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy.
More on the perennial philosophy next week.
Deep Thought: The big, huge meteor headed toward the Earth. Could nothing stop it? Maybe Bob could. He was suddenly on top of the meteor-through some kind of space warp or something. “Go, Bob, go!” yelled one of the generals. “Give me that!” said the big-guy general as he took the microphone away. “Listen, Bob,” he said. “You’ve got to steer that meteor away from Earth.” “Yes, but how?” thought Bob. Then he got an idea. Right next to him there was a steering wheel sticking out of the meteor.
Today I am grateful for:Being a good listener since practically everyone I know is a good speaker – ad infinitum
Guess the Movie: “And I say, ‘Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.’ And he says, ‘Oh uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.’ So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.” Answer: Caddyshack, 1980
Polls Today – Kerry 211/Bush 327. Tidbit from the Electoral Vote Predictor (see sidebar): Some voters have a choice where to register. When George Bush picked Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000, there was the minor matter that Cheney’ presence on the ticket might cause Bush to lose Texas’ 32 votes in the electoral college and hence the election. Seems the constitution says electors can’t vote for both a president and a vice president from their own state. In the spring of 2000, both Bush and Cheney were living in Texas and registered to vote in Texas. Cheney finessed the problem by changing his voter registration to Wyoming, where he had a summer home. This act could be considered creative voter registration because by no stretch of the imagination did Dick Cheney suddenly become a resident of Wyoming. He continued to live in Texas where he was running Halliburton, the oil services company that continued to pay him a salary even while he was vice president of the United States. The latter job doesn’t pay very well–only $202,900 per year–so a bit on the side is always helpful. That Halliburton received a $7 billion no-bid contract to help rebuild Iraq’s oil industry is mere coincidence.
End of Day – 8:33 pm
+ = Sun came out again today and I got my lawn mowed.
- = Slipped on wet grass and fell down while mowing my lawn. Lawn mowing days may be coming to an end.
Comments (5)
Funny how no one challenges Cheney’s registration. That only happens if you’re black or otherwise likely to vote Democratic. Funny how it’s ok for these guys to have massive conflicts of interest but the Clinton’s were in trouble for a failed land deal ten years before. I’m hoping the debates will bring a few of these things to light.
a very good friend of mine survived a rare and usually fatal kind of breast cancer. 3% survive and those that do usually have lasting damage from the chemo and the treatment. they used experimental treatment so her nervous system isn’t completely fried, but she’ll never be the person she was before they discovered the cancer. her husband expresses it best when he says… a 900 pound gorilla moved in and refused to leave, leaving a wake of debris behind him.
my sister is surviving, I did the Avon Walk in Boston in May, 39.3 in two days. I don’t know how long it will be for a cure to this and other terrible diseases but I have to believe every little bit counts. my sister feels guilt, as she watches others fight with various cancers and lose the battle she was told she would but hasn’t thus far. it is a beautiful and hard thing to survive.
I can only imagine. May she remain blessed.
Treya gained more in her short lifetime than many people do who live to be 90.