20220211 - Breathing And Longings

'I remember when I was a kid there was this famous saying in activism —I don’t remember who it's attributed to originally— that says: “if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention”. And it’s true: If you go to a factory farm, or you go to a sweatshop, or you go to an open-pit mine or a landfill, like, fuck, you’d be pretty outraged. And then it's like, “How do you do your normal stuff, in the face of THAT?” At the same time, I would read Kahlil Gibran or Hafiz, and the artist and the poet and the mystic would say: “If you aren’t overwhelmed by the beauty of life, you aren't paying attention.” An I was like, “how to hold both of those at the same time?” Because it's only because life is beautiful that i’m outraged that it's not being respected. But if I'm only outraged, i'm not actually connected to what is deeper than the outrage, which is the love of life that that other emotion is in relationship to. So then it's like, okay, “if I’m outraged all the time i'm actually not honoring the thing itself” —and yet the outrage serves a function. So how do I hold my connection to the beauty of life, to just appreciate it right now? Because we might all get taken out by a super volcano, or an asteroid, or a Carrington event tomorrow. So how do we just be with the beauty of it now, in a way that's honoring and have that motivate us, working on how to ensure the highest quality of life for all life now and into perpetuity, simultaneously. That's part of the dialectic, personally, for me.' *-Daniel Shmachtenberger, in conversation with Nate Hagens, host of “The Great Simplification" Podcast.* Thinking about it I was reminded about where we find our intention. There is a teaching from Marshall Rosenberg, author of Non-Violent Communication, that says “Behind every action is a beautiful need.” The tragedy is that we often act in a way that makes it very unlikely for our needs to be met. When we meet challenges in life it’s so easy to step into opposition to those challenges. Usually this doesn’t work, the resistance only amplify the pain. I believe a better strategy is to connect with the beautiful need inside that is not being met and act in alignment with that. Connecting with our true needs is what it means for me to “_hold my connection to the beauty of life”._ Video: https://youtu.be/3bxzo79SjpE?t=5440