Today Sunday, my day of rest. I will observe and wait while things are forming without anyone foreseeing or preparing. Little by little life is getting richer. Have faith. I will write to you seven positive thoughts. That is what I have learned by studying and experiencing some of the two magnificent teachers that gave me the guidelines to my life. There are many GURUS and most are from Tibet or India but there re also some great teachers in the West.
A. Alejandro Jodorowsky, one great genius!
Jodorowsky
is a mystic and a genius. Jodorowsky’s parents were Ukrainian Jewish
immigrants. When he was eight years old, the family moved from Tocopilla to
Santiago. He enrolled in the University of Chile in 1947 but dropped out two
years later. He began writing plays in 1948 and founded an experimental theatre
group in 1950.
In 1953
Jodorowsky moved to Paris, where he worked with French mime Marcel Marceau. He
made his first film, the short La Cravate (1957; The Severed Heads), about a
young man (played by Jodorowsky) who falls in love with the proprietor of a
shop where one can swap out one’s head. In the early 1960s Jodorowsky,
Spanish-born French author Fernando Arrabal, and French artist and author
Roland Topor formed a loose avant-garde movement, Panique, named after the
Greek god Pan and dedicated to the shocking and the surreal. Jodorowsky’s
most-noted work in that period was the four-hour-long performance “Mélodrame
sacrementel” (1965; “Sacramental Melodrama”), in which he slit the throats of
two geese, was whipped, and nailed a cow’s heart to a cross, among other bizarre
happenings.
Jodorowsky divided his time between Paris and Mexico, where he wrote a series of comic books, Anibal 5 (1966), and wrote and drew a weekly comic strip, Fabulas panicas (1967–73; “Panic Fables”). In 1968 he directed his first feature film, Fando y Lis, which was based on a play by Arrabal. Fando and his paralyzed lover, Lis, journey across a desert and encounter a gang of transvestites, blood drinkers, and a man playing a burning piano. The film caused a public outcry at its premiere at the Acapulco Film Festival and was banned in Mexico. He later developed a kind of therapy called: Psycho-magic.
B. The second genius I admire is my Mentor Michael Meade. He makes sense when he describes life as an adventure - not only one adventure but TWO! Here is what he writes:
"No matter the conditions around us, there are two great adventures that the soul would have us undertake. Our life-project involves both making a way in the outer world and awakening to the way of being already planted within us as a divine spark-seed. The first adventure of life begins with the first breath we take; it concerns the course of human development that leads to “growing up” and eventually entering the world on our own two feet and establishing ourselves in the marketplace of life. The first arc of adventure requires that we produce something, achieve in some way, and “make something of ourselves.” While following this initial arc we make a life, find a livelihood, and adopt a lifestyle.
On the first adventure we take up the common challenges of life and often do so while following paths that others choose for us. We follow an education track or a career course that “runs in the family” or seems most likely to lead to security or worldly success. Whether we succeed or fail, we become socialized in certain ways that inevitably lead away from the inner design and true aim of our intended personality. For what allows us to adapt to the culture around us most often leads to an over-adaptation in regard to our deeper sense of how to dwell in this world.
The first adventure of life is necessary for us as well as for the culture around us. Yet the deep psyche has a better design than the ego’s plan, the family’s requirements, or the culture’s map. Whereas the first adventure may involve the pursuit of happiness and the recognition that comes from outer accomplishments, the second adventure of life involves the fulfillment of the inner longings and hidden destiny of the soul.
The second adventure aims at a path that leads beyond the concerns of the daily world, yet it is of great importance for the continuance of that world. It involves stepping off the common pathways and going off the map that others have given us.
It involves finding a way that takes us further into life rather than simply adapting to available lifestyles. We are here to decipher and live up to what life asks of us, not what others might ask us to live up to for them. This idea does not arise from simple rebellion or egocentricity, rather it is the essence of spiritual growth. We all have something to give to the world from our essential nature, and when the world around us becomes dark and increasingly uncertain, it becomes more essential for us to live the adventure of the soul.
The second arc of life involves taking up the inner-directed path and following the thread of destiny that truly orients us to life and to our genuine destination. This more radical path leads to a spiritual journey, not because it is religious in nature, but because it serves the uniqueness in one’s soul, the “spirit that is already there.” The first adventure tends to involve gathering information about the world and common knowledge of how to survive in it. The second adventure involves a kind of “gnosis,” a deeper knowledge of life that becomes available once we awaken to the nature of the inner spark and the greater calling set within the soul. It involves finding and learning to give one’s god-given talents, skills, and gifts in ways that make life in general more meaningful and genuine human community more possible. The second adventure leads to the pursuit of wisdom, the kind of transcendent knowledge that enlivens individual life, nourishes genuine community, and helps re-create culture.
Outer
success, common expectations, and evident achievements usually reign over the
course of the first arc of life, but the second arc is a deeper venture that
values things differently. Our worst failures in the course of life’s first
adventure can become the fecund soil from which the second adventure grows.
Places of struggle, loss, and suffering can be revalued as the inner arc of
awakening revisits core life experiences to reclaim meaning, even from
seemingly wasted aspects of life. The key to understanding our true nature
often resides where we have fallen the hardest yet somehow have survived. The
often avoided places of loss and collapse, of abandonment and rejection, are
where the inner light of soul waits to be found. The soul values depth and the
darker knowledge of understanding that often grows more from failure than from
success. In the dark times it becomes important to value the darker knowledge
found in trials and tribulations that reveal the spark burning and glowing
within us all along."
Finally here is a list of positive ideas for you to reflect upon.
1. That
seed that we think is intimate, it contains a tree that includes a forest.
2. Let's
not despair, not everything is logical, unexpected things happen. There is
always the possibility of an encounter we thought was impossible.
3. All that
we think we possess, possesses us. We won't be free until we let him go.
4. No
memory is entirely true.
5. If you
can't solve your problems now, don't let yourself down. The tree withstands the
flood by standing upright beneath the water.
6. THIS IS
THE SECRET: YOU ARE NOW WHAT YOU WILL BE.
7. We will
realize ourselves when we meet a goal that constantly moves away from us.
