You Are in Possession of Life's Most Monumental Gift

Your consciousness is a miracle!

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I dream that I love everything about my life. I dream that each event I have ever experienced or will ever experience is precious and glorious, even the painful interludes.

I dream that I have personal possession of the universe's most monumental and mysterious accomplishment: "consciousness."

I have a visceral insight about the mercurial flash and shimmer that ceaselessly whirls around inside my head: It's miraculous. I can think thoughts any time I want to—soaring, luminescent, flamboyant thoughts or shriveled, rusty, burrowing thoughts . . . thoughts that can invent or destroy, corrupt or redeem, bless or curse.

There's more. I can revel and wallow in great flows of feelings. It's ultimately irrelevant whether they are poignant or intoxicating or somewhere in between. I simply relish the fact that I can harbor so much intensity. I cherish the privilege of commanding such extravagant life force.

And maybe the best part is being in possession of a prodigiously potent magical tool: an imagination. I can use it to change and shape the way my thoughts and feelings unfold. It potentially gives me the power to treat every single one of my experiences as a door leading to infinity.





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IDIOT COMPASSION

Pema Chödrön says that one of the enemies of compassion “is idiot compassion. This is when we avoid conflict and protect our good image by being kind when we should definitely say 'no.'

"Compassion doesn't only imply trying to be good. When we find ourselves in an aggressive relationship, we need to set clear boundaries. The kindest thing we can do for everyone concerned is to know when to say 'enough.' Many people use Buddhist ideals to justify self-debasement. In the name of not shutting our heart we let people walk all over us.

"It is said that in order not to break our vow of compassion we have to learn when to stop aggression and draw the line. There are times when the only way to bring down barriers is to set boundaries."

- Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times





ON NOT MEETING NAZIS HALFWAY

Rebecca Solnit writes:

"We get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family.

"This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything.
"But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists.

"And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people.

"Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?"

— Excerpted from the essay, "On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway," by Rebecca Solnit





REAL COMPASSION

A reader tried to tell me that we need to rise above partisan politics; that we need people who have no ideology fueling their perspective; that we can't afford to be feeding argument.

This person invoked Martin Luther King Jr. as fitting this description. They said that King brought people together like no one has done since.

The truth is very different. Martin Luther King Jr. was fiercely anti-racist, anti-poverty, and anti-war and anti-militarism. He did not hold anything back in his criticisms of the corrupt American system. And he alienated a great number of white people.

Historian Nathan Connolly says it's important to remember that King was considered a divisive figure, both in his lifetime and after his death. Some people today try to make him into a consensus builder. But the fact is that he never watered down his commitments to justice.

It's true that he specifically advised us to avoid physical violence. But he was a staunch fighter, a vehement defender of what's right, an uncompromising force advocating a fundamental remaking of American politics and culture.





TOXIC NEGATIVITY

I am all in favor of critiquing what some call "toxic positivity." When we refuse to look at difficulties and insist on being compulsively optimistic, we spawn monsters. At the same time, I think toxic negativity is at least as big a problem.

Science says that we actually take pleasure in the negative emotion itself. We willingly dive back into misery again and again for the same reason we willingly board a roller coaster or go bungee jumping: We get a rush from it.

That is, the pleasure/reward centers of your brain light up and release dopamine. And you can get addicted to whatever causes your brain to release dopamine, whether it's chocolate or fistfights.

More info

How to overcome your brain's fixation on bad things

More Info on How to overcome your brain's fixation on bad things





MALEFIC ECSTASY

"Malefic ecstasy" or "pestilent ecstasy" or "exultant malaise" is the pleasure that the disenchanters feel as they dwell on and talk about horrific futures and demoralizing events.

They don't want their blissful pessimism to be diluted. That's why they hate it when we offer evidence that world is a paradise replete with miracles and blessings, even if it is also a realm where much suffering occurs.

We align ourselves with poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning's hypothesis: "Earth's crammed with heaven."





ENLIGHTENMENT IS LOVE IN ACTION

One thing is certain about your destiny in the coming years: Life will conspire to bring you deep insights into the nature of reality—and the excited joy that comes with it.

If you decide to cooperate with life’s efforts, keep in mind these provocations from designer Elissa Giles:

“Enlightenment is not an asexual, dispassionate, head-in-the-clouds, nails-in-the-palms disappearance from the game of life. It’s a volcanic, kick-ass, erotic commitment to love in action, coupled with hard-headed practical grist.”