Friday, February 01, 2008

institutional living

Marriage is a great institution, if you don’t mind living in an institution.

-- Source unknown

***********

This often occurs to me when getting married again crosses my mind.

Needles, to say, living in an institution is not my idea of fun.

I think it's possible to have the best aspects of a marriage relationship outside of the confining, restricting, impeding nature of what our culture views to be a "normal" day-to-day existence.

Confining, restricting, and impeding just don't cut it.

Feb 1, 2008 6:55:46 AM | ear candy

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more Joan But isn't it helpful to have the intention to stop? It can be very useful, but like everything else, it is ultimately beyond your control. There is obviously tremendous power in the mind, and there's no reason not to use it, if you can! I saw the power of intention when I studied martial arts. We had to break boards by punching them. If you visualized your punch going through the board, it did. Amazing! And then, if you imagined hurting your hand, sure enough, the board didn't break and you hurt your hand. Intention can be helpful! But, here's the catch: despite my best efforts to visualize my hand going through the board, sometimes I visualized the opposite. It wasn't in my control! It seemed like it was when my intention matched what happened. But the truth is that intention, like everything else, comes out of nowhere. But that said, the only way to play the game is to play the game. In a sense, we have no choice except to pretend that we're making choices. And in that play of apparent choosing, intention is extremely useful. Susuki Roshi often cautioned being idealistic and having "gaining ideas." And yet at the same time he also said, "In some sense we should be idealists; at least we should be interested in making bread which tastes good and looks good!" Of course! We naturally want to produce good bread, metaphorically speaking. Doing your best, working to improve, training hard, visualizing success, utilizing intention, and taking care of business are in no way antithetical to deep realization. There seems to be a natural aspiration in us that wants to heal, clarify, repair, correct, and improve. That aspiration is part of the functioning of life. There's nothing wrong with it. When we know...
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nothing whisperer Psssssst... Not that you ever would, Debra, but when someone tells their best friend about their difficult day, or how tricky relationships have been, or that they have a jolly good life in most regards except financially, not only do they relive the unpleasantness, but they commission all the elements to project into their future whatever they've been claiming. Besides, you'd never say, "jolly." Better to whisper sweet nothings - The Universe -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thoughts become things... choose the good ones! ® © www.tut.com ® Happily, Debra, it works even faster in reverse. Tell them about all that now serves you, however meager your portions, and it shall promptly multiply.

Deb Schanilec

Connected and Committed relationship transformation strategist.

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