Archive for December, 2008
In a country at war, there was a king who tormented his captives rather than killing them outright.
The king led them to a room where a group of archers waited at one side opposite a huge iron door.
On the walls around them hung skeletons with arrows in their chests. In this room the king asked them to stand in a circle and said:
“You can choose to die by the archers’ arrows, or to go through the iron door. I’ll be waiting for you behind that door.”
Everybody chose death by the archers.
At the end of the war, a soldier who had served the king for a long time turned to him and said: “Your majesty, can I ask you a question?”
The king looked at him with expectation. “Yes.”
“Your majesty, what is behind that door?”
The king’s answer was: “Go and see for yourself!”
The soldier, with a little apprehension, opened the door and when he did so, rays of sunshine lit the room.
The door opened to the way to freedom - far away from that fortress.
The surprised soldier looked at the king who said:
“I gave them the choice but because of their fear they preferred to die instead of taking the risk and opening the door. That’s the truth.”
How many doors in your life are closed by fear?
How many times have good people lost freedom and chosen a trap because of false imagination?
If they had looked at reality with open eyes, they would have recognized where the real danger was and where the way out was, wouldn’t they?
“Look. See what you see, not what someone tells you that you see.
What you observe is what you observe. Look at things and life and others directly, not through any cloud of prejudice, curtain of fear or the interpretation of another.
Instead of arguing with others, get them to look. The most flagrant lies can be punctured, the greatest pretenses can be exposed, the most intricate puzzles can be resolved and the most remarkable revelations can occur, simply by gently insisting that someone look.”
From chapter 17 of The Way to Happiness®- A common sense guide for better living
Correct choices, brave decisions in life and a real competence in any area, are all based on the ability of the person to look.
I am realizing I have not participated in my own blog since FOREVER! Sigh. Definitely sad.
Please have an awesome holiday season and just go for it in 2009.
I kind of am. A lot of changes for me. I can’t lie, I am a bit scared. But as someone back in San Fran use to say, “It’s all good!”
So for the holiday, I thought I’d share a little something you could call spiritual:
Beyond the Limitations of Beliefs
To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd. If you knew what truth is, what God is, you would neither be a theist nor an atheist, because in that awareness belief is unnecessary. It is the man who is not aware, who only hopes and supposes, who looks to belief or to disbelief to support him, and to lead him to act in a particular way.
Now, if you approach it quite differently, you will find out for yourselves, as individuals, something real that is beyond all the limitations of beliefs, beyond the illusion of words. But that - the discovery of truth, or God - demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth - and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it - to recognize that, to realize that, the mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free. To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is.
The Book of Life - December 21 - JKrishnamurti.org
