Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
— Henry Ward Beecher
HW Beecher on Faith
13 Saturday May 2017
Posted in quotes
Tag Archives: faith
Einstein on “Survivor Cow” …
07 Tuesday Oct 2014
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Yesterday, I wrote on Survivor Cow. Today, I came across a quote from Einstein in my notebook that resonated with that post. He said:
To dwell on the things that depress or anger us, does not help in overcoming them.
And I think he’s right. 
Today I will leave you with the Trust card from the Osho tarot deck, which I have kept as my desktop background for over a year now:
On “Survivor Cow” …
07 Tuesday Oct 2014
Some readers noted that I seemed pessimistic in a recent post. As if, with all that is going on in the world today, we are simply trapped in a hopeless situation.
Well, I was thrilled today to hear about Survivor Cow, a courageous cow who fell into a lake and swam to shore on a small island in the Irish countryside.
This brave bovine, while stranded, gave birth to a healthy calf, yet found herself in a precarious situation: no one was feeding her on this island–she was thought to have mysteriously disappeared–yet even if she were able to swim back to her fields, her young baby couldn’t possibly swim back to shore with her. So, she did what any cow in her situation would do. She ate.
And she ate. Week after week, she nursed her calf and ate everything green on that island. She did not panic and abandon her offspring. She did not allow the hopelessness to get to her, give up, and collapse in cow tears. She ate.
Months later, Kevin Carolan, a farmer neighboring the property of the long-missing cow, happened to stop and look out over his own property and the lake. Odd, he thought, as he gazed upon the perpetually green island. It was as if someone had mowed the lawn there. Finally he remembered his neighbor’s missing cow, and put two and two together. The cow and her calf were rescued this past weekend.
This story speaks to me for two reasons. First, it is a breath of fresh air just to see any good news at all (though WorldTruth.tv was the only coverage). Second, and more significantly, many of us find ourselves trapped on tiny islands of our own. We could waste quite a bit of energy thinking: how can I get off this island? how can I possibly feed my family? how do I survive, if not thrive, in these impossible circumstances?
These questions may indeed be worth asking, but they are not worth mulling endlessly, inducing stress and misery. In some impossible circumstances, it is merely by persisting–even if in some seemingly unrelated or unhelpful course of action, like eating the grass–that we actually manifest our salvation.
In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, “Pray to God, but row away from the rocks.”
So, yes, we may be living in a truly strange reality as humanity comes to grips with and overcomes The Powers That Be. And the odds may look quite unfavorable for humanity to overcome its shadow side. But, my fellow Survivor Cows, whatever tiny island you may be on– carry on, keep spreading the truth, and for goodness’ sake, keep eating the grass!
N.B. Survivor Cow is NOT to be confused with its antonym, Sheeple…
creating reality responsibly
07 Sunday Sep 2014
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More horror with James Foley headlining the news this week; 153,000 people die every day, yet these two lost to ISIS in the last month have stirred more fear, have incited more rage, have captured more MSM presence globally, than any since Michael Brown (oh wait, that was only a month ago–or is it already down the memory hole?). I hear Stalin’s words echoing, “When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when a million people die, it’s a statistic.”
A tragedy indeed. As I mentioned in my last post, the true crime here is not any beheading but the repeated broadcasting of those horrific images across every medium. It is a psychological crime and our collective consciousness is the victim. The searing into our collective eyes of a new nightmare, like the twin towers falling over, and over, and over…
In 2004, Karl Rove openly mocked a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist (emphasis mine):
Guys like you are “in what we call the reality-based community,” where people “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. …That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
Rove hints here at truths deeper than any we typically see from members of the cryptocracy: it simply does not work any more to study objective reality (he even calls it “discernible reality”), draw conclusions, and act accordingly. We must approach our conscious experience and act from a deeper understanding.
We have no option but to look away. To refuse to respond to what is being force-fed to us, and instead focus on creating the reality that we want to experience, and that we want our children to experience. I don’t for a second mean to imply that we should turn a blind eye to what is going on in the world. Quite the opposite, I feel we are obligated to remain informed–knowledge is power, after all. But as always, with power comes responsibility. The responsibility that comes with a deep understanding of current events involves rising above them, and soldiering on in spite of them towards a better reality.
And that is how we can change the world: neither by acquiescing to nor protesting against the reality imposed upon us by others, but by creating our own.
“Turn towards the sun, and the shadows fall behind you.”