June 20, 2016 by IdealisticRebel

End of the World

I love this video and this young man is going straight to the feet of God for well earned blessings. Love, peace, compassion are what we need. Kindness, gentleness and thoughtfulness round it out. I bet you can think of more. Whether or not you grew up with this qualities in your lives or not, there is still time for you to learn them. You can learn them and pass them on to others. They will learn and pass them on to others.

I don’t want to give you just words, which are easy to spout so let me give you an example. Please forgive me for using an example from my own life. I found my late husband dead in our home one evening. All of the usual things happened. After a couple of days, I asked my stepson to take me to the bookstore. I looked and looked and found, The Courage to Grieve. The associate wrapped it up and said she was sorry for my loss. It was a piece of kindness for me. With everything going on, I didn’t open the book for several more days. The associate had tucked a bookmark inside of the book, on friends. There was a piece of compassion and so it goes.

Every one of us has an opportunity to give little pieces away of these life’s building blocks away to family, friends or strangers. Without a lot of work or effort we can make the world easier, happier and more forgiving for many people.

Nameste

Barbara

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I agree with this thought

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May you be earning good karma

Our actions matter

October 30, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

Intentions

It is true that many of us have been traumatized by life. Some a few times and others many times. There are times that a person feels like they just can’t get up again. Some commit suicide and some soldier on. Some go through life broken, perhaps bandaged up and some having buttons that when pushed, trigger violent verbal responses that you are amazed are coming out of the person.

Trauma leaves very deep scars. Physical trauma leaves exterior scars, but the emotional scars leave deep scars. Therapy helps. Medication may help.Some scars keep you from loving and committing another because you feel vulnerable. Some scars keep you from loving yourself.

” Love is the way messengers from the mystery tell us things.

Love is the mother.

We are her children.

She shines inside us,

visible-invisible, as we trust

lost trust, or feel it start to grow again.”

—Rumi

Do You Love Me

“A lover asked his beloved,

Do you love yourself more

than you love me?

The Beloved replied,

I have died to myself

and I live for you.

I’ve disappeared from myself

and my attributes.

I am present only for you.

I have forgotten all my learnings,

but from knowing you

I have become a scholar.

I have lost all my strength,

but from your power

I am able.

If I love myself

I love you.

If I love you

I love myself.”

—Rumi

Love is not easy. No matter how long you know a spouse, partner, friend or even children. It can be the most joyous thing to ever happen to us and it can be the most mistaken and destructive. A doctor once told me that a broken heart can be really broken and he meant it the physical sense. I am not sure but I think he is right. When my husband died, my heart broke and I could feel it.

There are so many people and situations which can hurt us temporarily or for a long time. Turning our minds and hearts to meditation, positive thinking, forgiveness mixed with gentleness, compassion, kindness and caring can repair the mental and emotional damage.

It takes work to convince a person you care for them and you are there for them, but it is worth the effort. In America, in the twenty first century many people live alone. Trust issues, a lack of love and terrible fear of being vulnerable can stop the circle. The broken heart, trusting a person or God (however, you think of God ) is one of the important life lessons.

Just one more thing, deciding to stay alone, you don’t need people, you don’t want people around very often enforces the buttons and issues from the past. Neurologists are working on the parts of the mind that hold on to those past hurts, pains and suffering.

” When the effort passing step by step,

Experiencing stages, recognizing states, ‘

Becomes so filled with love and

light and compassion,

Then it recognizes this love and light

and compassion on every side.

And there is nothing to which one is unattached,

When the love transcending self recognizes

self no longer,

When the compassion transcending self feels

equally the pain of all,

When the mercy transcending self sends

blessing and healing everywhere,

When self becomes love and there is nothing

left to love…

O that transforming wonder of redeeming light!

O that bliss of transcendental bathing!

O that wondrous calm of the life of life!

When time is gone and bodies are no longer,

The dark night of sleep is ended,

The dark sleep of night is gone;

The eye perceiving pierces all veils

And only suffering is dead.”

—excerpt from In the Garden by Sufi Ahmed Murad

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My religion is LOVE

August 28, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

What Artists Need

Creative people, or we could say artists, have some needs to be able to fully access their creativity.

They need to love and to be loved. We, as creative people, need intimate relationships, emotional and intellectual friendships. Creative people need wide-ranging relationships. They also need human warmth, the occasional handshake. They need people who respect their work and who respect and care about them.

They need love, intimacy, and friendship more than they need gallery shows or tenure. The flow of love through our human lives is what we need and what we must attain.

Relating needs to be more than a nice idea. Creative people need to relate well to others. Van Gogh loved the idea of complement as an essential life accomplishment. He looked at human relationships and color relationships to be essential. He loved to use blue and yellow in his paintings and he felt that men and women need to and can support one another in life. The inability to accomplish this is one of the thousands of reasons for depression.

Creative people can be great composers, painters, writers, a great intellectual or a great soul. We need to climb down off of our high horses, tear our enemies lists to shreds. We need to stop criticizing and blaming others for our own failures. We are special but not completely unique.

Therapists suggest that artists consciously make a point of caring for others. Give without taking.

Feel, rather than steel yourself to the actions and comments of others. Count to ten and perhaps count more than once.

Manage your ego. Someone else’s success is not a personal affront to you. Moderate selfishness. Share credit when it is earned. We have hungers and desires but so does every living human being. Reduce your sense of injury. Let the old hurts which continue to haunt you go. Open up and let them drift away. They are heavy baggage.

Buddha told a story about an angry man. He had been injured emotionally by someone. He held that anger like a charcoal briquette just out of the fire. He held on to it day after day and in the end, he was the only one injured. He had a terribly bad burn and the other person was just fine and went on with their life as always. The angry man was scarred for life.

We live in a harsh world and it needs every bit of beauty we can add to it. It also needs our kindness, gentleness, compassion and love. These can change the world. Not completely, but it can and will make a difference. It can start with all of us.

Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2013

Black Mountain, NC

February 25, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

If Death Were a Woman

This poem grabbed me. I wasn’t thinking about Death, but the beauty of the words — the possibility of it — captured my imagination today.

We all will face Death, one day — some of us sooner than others — but how we face it, how we accept it or fight it, can be as important as how we live on the way there.

Death is scary. It isn’t something I want to do, any time soon — I have grandchildren to watch grow up, great-grandchildren to welcome many years from now — but when it comes, it would be nice to think it would be like this poem. Nice to think that those I’ve loved and lost were welcomed to the Other Side in so gentle and beautiful a fashion.

Namaste,

Barbara

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If Death Were a Woman

–Ellen Kort

I’d want her to come for me smelling of cinnamon

wearing bright cotton purple maybe hot pink

a red bandana in her hair She’d bring

good coffee papaya juice bouquet of sea grass

saltine crackers and a lottery ticket We’d dip

our fingers into moist pouches of lady’s slippers

crouch down to see how cabbage feel when wind

bumps against them in the garden We’d walk

through Martin’s woods find the old house

its crumbling foundation strung with honeysuckle vines

and in the front yard a surprise jonquils

turning the air yellow glistening and ripe

still blooming for a gardener long gone

We’d head for the beach wearing strings of shells

around our left ankles laugh at their ticking

sounds the measured beat that comes with dancing

on hard-packed sand the applause of ocean and gulls

She’d play ocarina songs to a moon almost full

and I’d sing off-key We’d glide and swoop

become confetti of leaf fall all wings

floating on small whirlwinds never once dreading

the heart-silenced drop And when it was time

she would not bathe me Instead we’d scrub the porch

pour leftover water on flowers stand a long time

in sun and silence then holding hands

we’d post for pictures in the last light

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November 9, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

The Path of Peace

Wear peace, it is all you own

Have you noticed that despite all of the discourse about the Affordable Healthcare Act and the typhoon, the Middle East is still simmering like a kettle of homemade soup? The area is very unstable and I think it won’t take much for it to explode. If it does, Israel and the United States will be receiving collateral damage. I am sure our military is looking at this and know much more than we could ever guess.

The only option we have to being drawn into another war, is the path of peace. We all talk a lot about peace, but each of us needs to do actions that are peaceful. I realize that I am probably preaching to the choir, but do each of us every day perform an act of peace? Peaceful acts to me means acts of kindness, acts of gentleness, reaching out a helping hand to someone in need.

The other day most of us saw the photo of the Pope kissing a terribly deformed person. I have seen it several times now and each time I come close to tears. Why? Because you don’t see that kind of compassion often. Usually that severe of a disfigurement will keepus all a couple of feet away. Yet this Pope walked his truth and kissed this man and blessed him.

It made me think of the Buddhist religion and their Goddess, Kuan Yin. She is the goddess of compassion. Think of peace as a recipe. We need equal amounts of compassion, love, acceptance, compromise and selflessness to make peace.

Path to peace

What the world needs now is love, acceptance, compassion, acceptance and each one of us must produce some every day. Are you ready to hold the door for someone with a cane?Would it occur to you to invite someone with no family to join you for the holidays? If a neighbor asks if you could take them to the doctor, would you willingly do it? There are so many things that we can do as an act of peace.

There are killings, people suffering with severe mental illness, anger is found everywhere, paranoia, dissatisfaction every where we look. People trying to protect themselves act without thinking. The Stand Your Ground Law was to be used in an emergency situation. It was designed to save your life or the lives of those with you. Now it seems to be a legal way to take the life of minority people.

When the colonies were founded, most people had guns. There were the Indians who were upset that we were stealing their land, there were bears, and mountain lions and other wild animals who could kill you or you could kill them and eat the meat. All kinds of people came to America for a hundred reasons and some of them could have been mentally ill or could be carrying a grudge. People had real reasons to feel fear. After the revolution, we were forming a new country based on new thinking and an experiment as how to form our government. Laws and people to enforce those laws were not on every corner. I can see where people felt they needed a gun.This just isn’t true in the twenty first century.

Despite the danger the early colonists lived in, they were hospitable, kind, compassionate. Today we see anger, a disconnect from reality, we see selfishness, and greed. Now people barely talk, if they bump into you they give you a dirty look, drivers wear faces filled with hate and irritation. Why? Why is our world so filled with anger and hatred? I have not lived a golden blessed life but I have had many blessings in it.

I do feel that stress fits in here as well as the ability to earn a livable wage. I think we have become very materialistic and as technology increases, there is a race to keep up with the newest gadget. We have to pay for them and we have to learn how to use them. There is no privacy in our lives anymore. With the advent of social media, nothing is personal and private. I admit that when people post on their status, I am eating breakfast or something as inane it makes me a little crazy. Yeah, ok, so eat. The world is worrying about mass shootings, strange viruses, how to save their home, or how will they pay for college for their three children. Another thing we have to face is the fact that we are acquainted with many people but there isn’t the time to really know people and to make friends.

So the path of peace is something we need to work on every day on our journey. You don’t have to write a book, you don’t have to win a Grammy. You just need to do something compassionate, ethical or kind every day. We’ll link them together and we will have our peace. And maybe we will have sacrificed the last of our children to the god of War.