Episode 32 - A Garden Hose vs Global Conflagrations

And welcome, welcome to A Resonant Life, produced by The Time is Now Productions. I am Mike Thompson, your host and Reflector in Chief. Over the next 20 to 30 minutes, we will discuss experiences and insights about living a life devoted to uncovering our authentic selves and finding fulfilling purpose from the past, the present, and the future.

To kick off our discussion, I'll share my opinions gathered from my life and experiences. Opinions between people are various, and we don't all need to hold the same ones. But it is fun to hear the opinions of others as it gives us an opportunity to freshen up our own. If you enjoy and gain insight, please subscribe and share.

If you have questions, please email them. And as always, nothing we cover here is a proscription or a prescription. It is a discussion of life and life's internal and external experiences. So let's get to it.

Hi, welcome. Thank you for joining me today. I'm so encouraged and grateful that you're here. Sometimes things in life. In the world get so, so overwhelming and it is a comfort and it's encouraging to know that we are all working together to make a better world. And you know, some, sometimes it feels as if the whole world is on fire and that daily that fire of war, violence, destruction is only growing.

And for me. As that realization crashes over me, I look around and the only thing I feel I have to try to put it all out, to make a difference, is this skinny little garden hose with just a trickle of water. So to speak, that's, that's my metaphor. And when I hear of wars starting, new wars, or of terrorism, acts of terrorism around the world, of mass shootings, of the disastrous effects of climate change that threaten the lives of millions, of more frequent natural disasters, When my, my own family and friends are split along deep political or social disagreements.

When I see more and more people living on the streets because they can no longer afford a home or have mental health issues. When I simply wake up in the morning and despite me being safe and sound, the world around me continues to suffer. And I ask myself with desperation, what do I do? What can I do?

It is so overwhelming and I feel so powerless to make any kind of difference. Sometimes it seems the only thing to do is sort of pull the covers back over my head and curl into a ball and go back to sleep. And then when I do get up out of bed, I'll just sleepwalk through the day. Numb, cut off, sort of protected in a bubble.

A bubble of ignoring everything. A bubble, it's a bubble born of powerlessness. Do you ever feel this way too? And then, as if global conflagrations aren't enough, And to all of it, the everyday stuff that life throws, the money worries, the discreements and squabbles, squeezing everything that needs to be done into the day.

It's completely overwhelming. So overwhelming, isn't it? Just, just saying it here, sharing with you like this, I, I feel, I feel exhausted, defeated. Powerless, hopeless, and if I let these feelings simmer a bit and then they give birth to apathy. That's checking out and turning away. Shutting down and, and, and closing my heart and mind.

Another metaphor, I feel like a small candle flame in a hurricane. Yeah, and that flame goes out pretty fast. It never really has a chance, does it? So, I'm sorry, I apologize. Maybe I'm bringing you down into a dark place sharing these, sharing my feelings and emotions on all this. I'm sorry. I, I think so many people though are feeling like this these days.

I, I know many of my friends and family are overwhelmed, just overwhelmed by the tsunami of our world's big issues and conflicts and problems, but this is a resonant life. And our job is to generate abiding happiness in our and others lives. Our job is to be a light of hope, insight, and happiness for others.

So, let's work together on finding a path out of this, up, up out of this darkness and feeling overwhelmed. And let's not, not only find a path out of it. But let's find an antidote, a practice and mindset that can help us weather the turbulence of the world to not only remain steady and stable ourselves, but to be lights of inspiration, hope and compassion that help others find their way.

Out of darkness, sadness, and powerlessness as well. We can do this. We have to do this. Okay. Let's, let's start from the beginning. Let's rewind to that overwhelmed feeling epitomized by the metaphor of having only a small garden hose to put out a global conflagration. Let's visualize it. Imagine it clearly.

Can you see it? Can you see yourself small, tiny, standing in front of an immeasurable wall of fire and violence and destruction? How do you feel suddenly? Do you want to run away? To go and hide? That's how I feel. My feeling is to get as far away as possible, to run away and create my own little safe insulated world of comfort that I can control.

Say like a small garden of hope to nurture. This feeling, this feeling and reaction is so natural. It is a survival instinct working at a deep subconscious level. Faced with overwhelming need, upset, conflict, the natural reaction for almost all people is to shut down, to protect, to consolidate, to withdraw, to become numb.

For many people, though, this isn't a path that actually works at all. For us, most likely, why? Because we are compassionate, because we care. Because no matter what we have hope because we care. About others, we will let our guards drop and let that chaos world in again. And then, and then sure enough, we'll become overwhelmed again and retreat again.

And so it is a repeating cycle. Our compassion keeps us in this competing cycle because we want to help. We want to help. We want to help, but then we're overwhelmed. Is any of this familiar to you, to your life? I think some people also react with, with anger, anger, rage, and fury. Born out of frustration.

They want, they want all of the conflict and misery to just stop, to end, but it doesn't. And they become angry, furious at the world. And when we are furious with the world, the world could care less. And so that anger, needing an outlet, a focus, what happens? It gets directed at those around us, even loved ones.

We become angry people. Okay. Let's, let's start digging ourselves out of this. Let's work together to find the path to do so. Remember spiritual cues? Let's use these negative feelings, hopelessness, self protection, even anger and rage. Let's use them as a spiritual cue, a spark of inspiration. Thank Motivating us to uncover a truth, an insight, a way, a way to move forward positively.

Okay, this feeling of being overwhelmed by the problems, wars, and conflicts of our world. Let's dig into it. This feeling causes two types of reactions, as we noted. For some, it causes us to withdraw, to emotionally protect ourselves and create our own little safe space of routine and habit. For others, like we said, it causes anger and that anger gets released on others.

So what do these reactions have in common? Objectively, stepping back from them, getting outside of them and looking, both Both are self focused, both are self focused, egocentric, but the path to abiding happiness we've been working on, the path to expanding peace in our world is to be other focused, altruistic in thought, word, and action.

Self protection, withdrawing to routine and habit, or allowing anger to burn and expressing that anger. These are self focused, egocentric behaviors and mindsets. These mindsets are not the mindset we are cultivating in our project and work together. Okay, we can remember, acknowledge, and affirm this, right?

That these reactions are self focused, egocentric. That's our spiritual cue. That's where it starts. This is the first step of getting out of this dark hole, of shining a light on our ego's success, hijacking our positive intents, the intent to be a person others rely upon. Our egos are so tenacious, they find every little crack and swoop in and distract us from our focus and our project.

Okay, just with this, this small bit of understanding, with this, I, I feel a little bit better already. I guess this realization is step one of getting out of this morass. So I feel a little bit better, right? But so easily and quickly, the knowledge that innocent children, innocent people are being slaughtered in conflicts, not of their making or being exploited by systems and people that don't value them, these thoughts intrude so quickly, so easily, despite me feeling better.

The problems of the world haven't changed, right? This tells me that step one, realization of what is happening with our ego and mindset, it isn't enough. It's missing something important. Something, something that helps us to sustain our sense of control over our ego. A spark that, that lights the flame that illuminates the darkness, so to speak.

That's something. That something is action. Concrete. Physical. Measurable. Repeatable. Action. So step two is to take action. But this needs more exploration so we can inure, inoculate, vaccinate ourselves against sliding back into powerlessness and darkness. Insight and conceptual understanding require action to bolster and empower them, to empower us.

So let's explore for a minute concept versus action. Conceptual thinking versus positive concrete action. Have you heard before of the observer effect? It is a phenomenon described in physics. Specifically, in an experiment, when the subject is observed, the observation changes what is being observed. Just, just observing changes what is being observed.

It is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. That's a mouthful. But what madness is this? Well, Let's not get bogged down with the specifics, but rather let's extrapolate to our efforts to get out of our dark holes.

Take, for example, a bicycle tire. We, we think maybe it's low, it needs air, but we want to know the pressure that it is so we know how much to inflate it, or to decide if we even need to inflate it. But to take the pressure with a gauge, a little bit of air will be released, lowering the pressure. So our observation, taking the tire pressure, changes the system.

So the path of inaction is to not take the pressure and just let it be. And surely the tire will eventually go flat. Because we have not acted. That's the natural outcome. Let me say it again. Not taking action. Just being satisfied with conceptual understanding or insight isn't enough. We'll just return to darkness.

Metaphorically, our bike tire will go flat. The path of action. Take the pressure while losing a little air. If we act, we will know how to go forward, how much air to add, or if we need to add air, we will know. Okay, how is this relevant, right? Doing nothing, the conceptual path, results in nothing changing and nothing getting Doing something, the path of action, changes things and potentially makes things better.

We change the system with our actions. Okay, step one. We realize that being angry or overwhelmed is a mindset. Where our self centered egos have taken over. It is a conceptual understanding, an insight. Step one is concept. Step two, we realize we have to take action to reassert our altruistic mindset. The mindset of creating and sustaining abiding happiness for ourselves and others.

We realize we need to take action. But we're still conceptual. We've only thought about acting and this is where things can break down because we are worried about and overwhelmed by the big things, the global conflagrations. And we've only this tiny garden hose. How can our actions possibly make a difference?

What's the point? Okay, what's next then? How do we move forward? We've got these realizations, but they're still conceptual. What's next? How do we move forward? Okay, step three. Change this paradigm. Our self centered ego is still clinging on, still influencing us, still driving. We know in our bones that we cannot, as individuals, solve enormous global problems.

My actions will not stop a war. And our egos beat that into our minds like drumbeats of defeatism. It is too much. We can't. We should just give up. There is nothing we can do. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's our ego driving us into inaction, keeping us frozen. No, no, no, no. Change the paradigm. Step three.

Okay. I can't stop my ego's drumbeat of negativity and powerlessness, but I still can do something, something different. I can't solve the world's problems, but I can help my friend. I can help a family member. I can even help a stranger. And I will. I will do something to help someone else. Some small thing.

I will help one person today, and I will help someone tomorrow. I will put another person's needs before my own. I will put someone else first. This is action. This is concrete, altruistic action. And if we put it on repeat, we will bring light to the darkness and this light will help us manage the onslaught of horror, destruction, and oppression going on in the world.

Step four. Yes, there is another step. We need more support, more reinforcement, so we don't fall back into hopelessness and powerlessness. This is all still a little bit fragile. Step four is going to help us make it firm, make it strong, make it immovable. We need to put some top spin on this to keep us moving, acting, helping, being altruistic.

The fourth step is to cultivate. Gratitude. We have so much in our lives to be grateful for, no matter our circumstances. There are blessings, positives, situations, experiences, people to be grateful for. Even waking up to a new day is something to be grateful for. Finding one thing each day. One thing in our lives, and giving thanks for it, is a way to do this.

Maybe it's one person. That's the way to do it. To cultivate gratitude. Even when we're feeling far from grateful. Maybe that one thing is nothing more than the insight and opportunity to take positive altruistic action. Grateful for the work we've done and are doing here. That is a virtuous circle, right?

That is a virtuous circle. Indeed. Being grateful for being able to help others. Also cultivating gratitude creates, creates a mindset of plenty and a full heart as does altruism in my own life. In practice, I've been imagining visualizing that, that I am not just a receiver. of blessings, that I have blessings in my life, but I've been visualizing being a custodian of those blessings.

The blessings I receive in my life are, are to be passed on, shared, distributed with others, hence a custodian. This mindset, this attitude has been slowly helping me to change positively the way I see Everything, including the negative, irritating, and disruptive things that happen in my daily life.

Everything is changing with cultivating this mindset of being a custodian.

The leader of Shinyo Buddhism, Keishu Shinso, is always talking about taking small, positive steps in the service of others. She describes this as walking the path of the Buddha, and a path that will inevitably change. bring peace to all. No positive action is too small. No small action is insignificant. No altruistic gesture is wasted or useless.

All are precious and important and necessary to creating abiding happiness. And not just for ourselves, but for others as well. Our orbits of happiness expand the more we turn to helping others.

I think we've done a good job today finding a path out of darkness caused by the overwhelming currents of the world. To summarize, when we're lost in darkness, we need to realize we are in darkness and are protecting ourselves, or that we're stewing an unfocused anger, all at the mercy of and under the control of our self-serving egos.

And then two, remember our path of altruism. Recognize and commit. Create the mindset of taking action. Commit to taking concrete, altruistic action. The third. Take that action, act, do something, anything, for someone, unconditionally, without distinction, and do it again. And again. And again. And the fourth, cultivate gratitude.

Not only for the things, people, situations, and blessings we have in our lives, but gratitude for the ability to reflect, then act for others. This is a superpower.

One more thought before we go, I think, I think we tend to think of things in our lives or our lives in general as broken and we need to fix them to make them better or perfect. This is how many people think of enlightenment to the enlightenment that Shakyamuni Buddha achieved and the path. He shared to reach it.

There is this idea that we are all broken Buddhas and we need to be fixed, purified, to let our authentic nature, our Buddha nature emerge without taint, to be enlightened as Shakyamuni was. But, but what if, just what if we aren't broken or warped by impurities? What if we are thinking about all of this all wrong, backwards, upside down?

What if there is nothing to fix or repair or even purify, really? What if it is really about acting for others always, simply that? No need, no want, no condition, no distinction. It is in those moments of selfless altruistic action. That we are Buddhas. We are enlightened. Keishu Shinsō also calls these Buddha moments.

And these happen not when we are thinking or contemplating. They happen... When we are acting, when we are wholly present in the moment for others. If we focus on that and act, then we purify without purification. We become whole rather than broken. We shine as our authentic selves rather than hiding in routine like becoming lost in a well tended garden.

We approach abiding happiness and become a force. Our little ineffective garden hose becomes infinitely more powerful than we could ever imagine, able to change the world. And the troubles of the world which used to overwhelm us instead teach us to open our hearts even wider and more fully. In this is a path.

Here, here are some final thoughts to help guide the way forward. Instead of judging, instead of criticizing, encourage. Instead of passing time, meditate, contemplate, and pray for others. Instead of gossiping, support. Instead of giving up, double down and lean in. Invite joy to blossom. Thank you. Thank you for today.

Every day we wake up to some new tragedy, yet I hope we've carved out a path to follow that will empower us to be positive, altruistic superheroes in the face of this, rather than falling into despair. Positive, concrete steps for others will always light the way. To abiding happiness for us and all others, the enlightenment Buddha uncovered and taught it's within reach and we can reach it and we can share it.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining today. If you enjoyed what you heard here and want to hear more, please subscribe and share. If you'd like to share your own experience, thoughts, or ask a question, please send an email to mike at resonant dot social. Theme music is courtesy of stock audios distributed by Pixabay. A Resonant Life is from The Time Is Now Productions.

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