 seed lies in its outer covering. Remove that and one awaits in great anticipation for the unhampered growing of an unknown gift. Free an idea, a concept, a question or rigid paradigm from the wrappings of incurious and unenquiring minds and who knows what watered thought will grow? - Goessoftly ******************** True personal conviction of something does not require endorsement from others to nail it in place. If the nails of outside approval, assurances, confirmation, praise and agreement are needed then ones conviction is not true conviction but merely a token subscribing to a particular belief or train of thought. ************* Are children better able to withstand a sentence of death e.g. cancer, than adults, and if so, why? Does this imply that children have a greater resiliance to emotional shock and stress than adults - are they better, or more willing to face reality and less prone to denial than grownups? How, one might query, does a child envision death, or understand the word " terminal" - in what ways are children more mature than adults that enables them to calmly face what their older counterparts learn and crumble at the thought? Do we only see this maturity of logic and reality in children in places such as the Oncology Unit in a Hospital, or can we indeed, recognize and learn from them if we only stop to observe, listen and respect? One needs to have made a practice of this last to be able to water this particular seedling. **************** Someone said that a Lie can travel round the world while Truth is getting its boots on. Why is it that a lie is more easily believed than the truth? A lie is a lie, is a lie, no matter how white, how small, how incorporating of a smidgeon of truth there be in it. Truth is truth, is truth even if the whole world refutes it and the seedling thought I leave to be watered, is this: Only in knowing what is true can one state a lie has been spoken, so what is there in Truth that needs no proof to support, confirm, or assert its veracity? How does one know that Truth is, indeed, Truth ? Is it in the phenomenon that when a lie is spoken, recognition of it being a lie comes from an unaware, unconscious knowledge of what is Truth? Is there, in all of us, a sense of Truth and a sense of Falseness that is as accurate as the homing instinct of the salmon who swim upstream against all odds, with much loss of life, unerringly ending at the old spawning grounds that centuries have not been able to eradicate despite man's efforts to divert or to destroy? ************************* T.S Eliot wrote: "And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time." This causes me to ponder as to the length of any exploring journey till one returns to the starting place, the terrain conditions through which one has traveled, the people, scenery and climates encountered on the way, the lessons learned, observations recorded, the twists and circumstances that brings about full circle - and in the end - what has become of the dream? The Taoist wrote: He who stands on tiptoe doesn't stand firm. He who rushes ahead doesn't go far. He who tries to shine dims his own light ( from " The axe falls first on the tallest tree".) My personal response to Eliot and the Taoist would be: From a solid foundation one can build without fear either of the fallibility of self or onslaught of the elements . If the starting place is solid both in physical or metaphorical strength one can learn to use the same foundational material, and in so doing, the elements however fierce or threatening cannot topple what is built and ones fallibility decreases with every brick well formed and put in place. (unless, the building is but a dream, in which case, one might as well be the wine-drunk mouse beating on his tiny furry breast, crying, " Come on all you cats".) Buddha said: " Regard this phantom world As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, A flash of lightening in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp - a phantom - and a dream " Pretty ephemeral world to dream in, eh? I have a healthy regard for dreams, and think that sometimes we need to dream to reach reality, need the stuff of dreams to convert into substance. I have dreams I hope yet to be realized, dreams I have realized - and then again - the cat has got me more than once! *******************  
 | SEEDLINGS A | SEEDLINGS B | SEEDLINGS C | SEEDLINGS D | | THE HEALING PROCESS | DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER | POETRY | Biographical Entries | THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE | STORIES FOR LITTLES (Pigmus and friends) | SEEDLING THOUGHTS TO WATER | |
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