The Down Side of Looking Good ...

"As long as I did newspaper work and had to go to different parts of Europe on assignment it was necessary to have one presentable suit, go to the barber, and have one pair of respectable shoes. These were a liability when I was trying to write because they made it possible to leave your own side of the river and go over to the right bank to see your friends there ,go to the races and do all the things that were fun and that you could not afford or that got you into trouble. I found out very quickly that the best way to avoid going over to the right bank and get involved in all the pleasant things that I could not afford and that left me with, at least, gastric remorse was not to get a haircut. You could not go over to the right bank with your hair cut like one of those wonderful looking Japanese noblemen painters who were friends of Ezra's. That would have been ideal and would have limited you to your own side of the river completely and kept you working. You were never free of assignments long enough for that sort of mane to grow but in two months you would look like something left over from the American Civil War and unacceptable. After three months you would have a good start on the sort of haircut Ezra's wonderful Japanese friends had and your right bank friends would think of you as damned. I never knew just what it was that you were supposed to be damned to but after four months or so you were considered damned to something worse. I enjoyed being considered damned and my wife and I enjoyed being considered damned together."

~ Ernest Hemingway, from A Moveable Feast

Vision

"It is possible for people to see what has been obscured from their awareness.
It is possible to step from the invisible to the visible.


We are so afraid that we cannot be what we dream ourselves to be,
that we stay hidden inside of a persona that we ourselves created ...


... Bring the invisible to Light so that you can begin to see your own
Beauty and claim your wholeness and your true voice.


When what has been obscured is illuminated,
you remember who you truly are."

~ Laura Basha

~from "Vision" page, www.whitebirdrising.com, © 2011

Sacred Discipline

Morning Moonset over the Golden Gate Bridge




"Discipline is remembering what you want."

~ the Reverend Kathryn Jarvis

I rose at 5:30am this morning, getting up early enough to take the breathtaking picture above, as well as to do my morning practices. Without those morning practices my day simply does not go as well.

While in Vienna this past summer, we visited one of the apartments in which Mozart and his family lived, a charming three floor residence in a beautiful old Viennese building in the heart of the city. There were several letters available to read, one in particular that caught my attention was a letter he had written to his sister Nannerl about his schedule while living in Paris.

He rose at 6am and attended to his morning routine. He then wrote music from 7am until 9am, at which time he saw students until 1pm. At 1pm he took his lunch, either with friends or clients, and spent the afternoon visiting or doing one thing and another as he found he couldn't write again until 5pm. He wrote from 5pm until 9pm, unless he was conducting or performing or traveling to do either. That, he said, was his routine every day.

As we all know, Mozart's music is still transcendently moving. What struck me was this ordinary routine which he carried out with exceptional discipline, the result of which was a life artistically fulfilled that left a legacy of music which continues to uplift humanity centuries later.

What if I could cultivate an affinity to that kind of discipline? It seems to me that I often feel as though I am missing out on things if I don't attend to this or that or the other. Yet, I experience fulfillment when I practice the discipline of what is important to me.


"Discipline is remembering what you want."

So, what do I want?
And what disciplined practices are needed for me to manifest it?

Good thoughts to ponder ...

© 2011 Laura Basha, PhD

Fearlessly Free from the Inside Out

~ "Priestess", detail from the dyptich "Transformation" by Laura Basha, 2007

In Buddhism, "taking refuge" means that "... we are willing to spend our life reconnecting with the quality of being continually awake.

Everytime we feel like 'taking refuge' in [the midst of] a habitual means of escape, we take off more armor, undoing all the stuff that covers over our wisdom and our gentleness and our awake quality. We're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're reconnecting with who we are. So when we say, 'I take refuge in the Buddha', that means I take refuge in the courage and the potential of fearlessness, of removing all the armor that covers this awakeness of mine. I am awake; I will spend my life taking this armor off. Nobody else can take it off because nobody else knows where all the little locks are, nobody else knows where it's sewed up tight, where it's going to take a lot of work to get that particular iron thread untied.

You have to do it alone.

The basic instruction is simple: Start taking off that armor. That's all anyone can tell you. No one can tell you how to do it because you're the only one who knows how you locked yourself in there to start with."

~ From Comfortable with Uncertainty, by Pema Chodron