copyright Jal Feuerstack

I have been back in QC for just over a week, and already find the snowbanks more tiresome than astonishing. The daily melt is minimal but perceptible, measured against the lamp post in our front yard which was entirely covered and is now emerging. We can also see twice the amount of our neighbour's home up the hill.

All of this time off allows me to think (reflect, meditate) and catch up with others' blogs (as always, doberman pizza and Baha'i Views are well worth the meander through, both visually and conceptually). I have been reading (have I mentioned reading?) 'New Age' material and reflect upon the many gems of wisdom in Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. I am captured by a story he relates of the great spiritual leader and thinker, Krishnamurti, who said, it appears, "I don't mind what happens." In other words, if you derive your responses internally, from within your spiritual core, your joys and sorrows are not tempered by the winds of external fates.

I don't know if I "aspire" to this state: like some people with whom I've discussed the idea, I am doubtful that an absence of emotion is something to be desired, since our emotions can cue us to deeper awareness of our spiritual state (although that could be just another sign of ego). But I can see the value in the emotional state not being dictated by external realities. I do not wish to be subject to the whims and fancies of a mercurial world. I have enough whimsical and fanciful going on within me, to be bothered by the external 'realities'. Or, as Fred Alan Wolf might say, "There is no 'out there' out there." I have known for some time that race, religious differences, culture, and most aspects of human perception are socio-culturally constructed (what we think we see is what we think we believe). But if you are freed from these (through the transformative power of spiritual attunement, however you define this) then you allow yourself to be visited with the greater connective tissue of the spirit of the worlds of God.

It's a language issue, a body issue, a how-I-see-my-mind issue; all are inevitably flawed, because there is always the running and unconscious undermining of the ego. I get that. So I am reflecting on the synthesis of gratitude, hopefulness, and joy, with selflessness, detachment, and connection to the "Universe". I think it's about wanting God, more than anything else or anyone else: about the desire for mystical connection. And this "thinking" is giving me a lot to meditate about, in the quiet of this winter world.

Spring break: a euphemism in the Ottawa Valley, where I am spending mine on leave from my BC teaching job.  The snow in front and in back of our house is taller than all of us, and my six foot plus son has to throw new snow high on the accumulated snow banks when he shovels out the driveway. Roads are like tunnels and for me, unwalkable, so I have been on the exercise bike again, watching "The History of God", a film adapted from Karen Armstrong's book, and a series, "Rome", which has way too much graphic sex for my taste but also some funny cameos amidst the putative history.

I continue to enjoy my daughter's blog, where she posts a variety of opinions and observations, and also to find Victor's blog on social issues quite dependable.  It's always fun to tune it to Baha'i Views and to Dan Jones' blog...and several others I have listed in the sidebar.  I don't have as much time as I used to, so my blog-checking slows down, and there are so many good blogs to choose from...I do start wondering a lot about copyright and ownership and publication...

Lately I have been doing a lot of research into New Age films and books.  I have just finished both Deepak Chopra's How To Know God and Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Both are so aligned with my understandings as a Baha'i that I can heartily recommend them.  The universe, such as it is, lines up to affirm Baha'u'llah's revelation in so many dimensions...if you are a reader who is attuned to the spirit, to the universe, to the power of positive thinking, to the letting go of ego, and to humanitarian service as the goal of your creation, these books and the Baha'i teachings will dovetail as a means by which your thoughts can indeed become your reality.