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Napa CA weather forecast Monday September 5, 2022: high
111° (actual: 112°)
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There's a plethora of listenings we are when
the physical universe
serves up
the hottest weather in recorded history. Here are a few pertinent
examples: "It shouldn't be this way",
"Something's wrong",
"We've broken something", "Who's (or what's) to
blame?", "The other guy / political party / state /
country's to blame", "It's our fault,
the writings
have been on the walls for a long time, and we're just ignoring
them", "What if we can't fix it?" etc. I'm not debating whether any
are true or not. They may be. They may not be. That's
not what's in focus yet. I'm first distinguishing listenings, of
which we could come up with hundreds more.
Now if you're tracking with me, you may have already noticed
there's one listening I've not yet included in this list of
listenings. It's the one with the most import, the one that makes
the profoundest difference in all our
experiences and especially in our experience of reality. It's the
one without which we're triggered,
reactivated,
at-the-mercy-of, buffeted, and
run
by all the others. It's the listening
"This is the way it
is"
(if you're hearing that as apathetic: that's not it, stay with me).
It's fundamental to everything, foundational.
Simply put,
"This is the way it
is"
restores being. And when it's 112° in the shade, you can bet
reality will eclipse your sense of being unless you deploy the only
leverage you have for restoring it, which is choosing who you'll be
in the face of it.
None of "It shouldn't be this way",
"Something's wrong",
"We've broken something", "Who's (or what's) to blame?", "The other
guy / political party / state / country's to blame" etc work for
restoring being. As to whether all the other listenings are true or
not (and in all likelihood, some of them are), if I'm going to
make a difference
mitigating future 112°
dog days,
I first have to accept them.
So: there's listening
"This is the way it
is"
... and there's being accepting (they must occur in that order).
Prior to being accepting, there has to be
"This is the way it
is"
- not like a preference, not like an
opinion,
and certainly not like a
resignation,
but rather like
"This is the way it
is
because
this is the way it
is.".
When things are the way they are for no reason other
than they're the way they are, that's reality. Look:
accepting reality doesn't
cause
transformation
or the advent of new possibilities. Rather accepting reality allows
transformation and the advent of new possibilities to
begin.
"It shouldn't be this way",
"Something's wrong",
"We've broken something", "Who's (or what's) to blame?", "The other
guy / political party / state / country's to blame" etc will
eclipse transformation when not grounded in
"This is the way it
is.".
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