February 21, 2005

• MONDAY BOOK

  Grace and Grit – Ken Wilber

  This was the original book I was reading when I started doing Monday Book reports. I’d made my way about halfway through when I put it down – partly because it’s an intense story of the experience of events leading up to a death by cancer and partly because it’s so chockfull of deep insights to digest. But I finally finished reading the book about the frozen north (This Cold Heaven) and decided to return to where I’d left off months ago. And on the very first pages this morning I found such a nice discussion of forgiveness I thought I would share it. In light of the daily violence in the world between people who cannot forgive each other days, weeks, months, and years of transgressions, it seems all the more important to keep reminding oneself of the other options.

  And so the simple lessons started coming home to us, beginning with acceptance and forgiveness…the theory behind forgiveness is simple. The ego, the separate self-sense, is…propped up not just by concepts, but by emotions. And the primal emotion of the ego…is fear followed by resentment…In other words, whenever we split seamless awareness into a subject versus an object, into a self versus an other, than that self feels fear, simply because there are now so many “others” out there that can harm it. Out of this fear grows resentment…The ego then, is kept in existence by a collection of emotional insults; it carries its personal bruises as the fabric of its very existence. It actively collects hurts and insults, even while resenting them, because without its bruises, it would be, literally, nothing…What the ego doesn’t try is forgiveness, because that would undermine its very existence. To forgive others for insults, real or imagined, is to weaken the boundary between self and other, to dissolve the sense of separation between subject and object. And thus, with forgiveness, awareness tends to let go of the ego and its insults, and revert instead to the Witness, the Self, which view both subject and object equally. And thus…forgiveness is the way I let go of my self and remember my Self.

  If it seems too exhausting to imagine countries far away laying down their fears and forgiving each other, try to imagine it for just one day in one’s own life. How much that happens in our day is fear or anger driven? What can be forgiven? How much does one forgiveness on one given day by one given person count?
  

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  Deep Thought: “If you’re an ant, and you’re walking along across the top of a cup of pudding, you probably have no idea that the only thing between you and disaster is the strength of that pudding skin.”
  Today I am grateful for: Semi-retirement
  Guess the Movie: “Where were you?” “I had dinner with my boss.” “Kind of a late dinner.” “I guess. The plumber came?” “Yes, the fucking plumber came.” “Hey, can you just give me a break?” “What’s the matter with you?” “I don’t know, I’m stressed out.” “You wanna smoke some pot?” “No I don’t wanna smoke some pot… why, you got some?” Answer: You Can Count on Me, 2000. Winner: skrawler.
  Knocking on the Nuclear Door
  by Lynda Hurst
  In 1992, in the warm glow of the Cold War’s end, the United States stopped making and testing nuclear arms, halting its arsenal at 10,000 warheads and pledging to cut back further still.
  Four years later, it was the first country to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban treaty. But though committed to it in principle – certainly in regard to other nations – the U.S. wanted to keep its options open and, in 1999, to universal dismay, refused to ratify the treaty.
  What happened on 9/11 could mean America never will ratify – or not, at least, while President George W. Bush holds office and the Republicans hold Congress. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day
  + = Plumbing underway.
  - = Dreading inevitable water bill on top of the plumbing bill.

  • 9:31 am
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