Life Matters - E.C.Nemeth (most inspirational books of all time .txt) 📗

because they are the accepted symbol of value. But objective value is not necessarily personal value.
How much is a kiss worth? Careful how you answer.
If you could once more kiss the face of a loved one passed over, how many strips of paper would you give? And if you could have all the metal disks you want if you never kiss your lover again, would you make the bargain?
How much is love worth to you? How much does it cost for that fuzzy, funky, carefree feeling of being loved, of being accepted as you are, of being thought of and missed when you're away? How much is your health worth? Would you rather be rich and sick or poor and healthy? How about peace? Is peace and safety open to the highest bidder? Is the risk of a stray bullet in the cities of our world ending our little ivory tower lives an equitable investment for lives lived in little boxes, building our retirement packages until we finally leave it all behind and drop dead?
How much is a person's life worth?
How about the life of an aids virus?
These questions are not the purview of science. Yet they are the only questions of value. The institutionalization of objective value is why I am not happy. Chasing little pieces of paper leaves me empty. I have no price tag, none of us do. But society does place a value on its individual members, and it varies based upon the specific individual.
This system is not equitable.
We have all been sold a bill of goods, but the goods have not done the job we were promised it would. Remember, in this world the motto is, buyer beware. Why should the product of the product rely on some other law than the one it establishes by its own prominence. Beware what institutions have for sale. Their products are not as they seem, whether service, product or plan. They are all shiny and new, prettily packaged, often in boxes far larger than the contents require as if to imply size means value. In the end, they break down and need to be replaced. Even that observation is only inevitable because that is the final conclusion of objective reality: good or bad, all things come to an end. What institutions do deliver on is the perpetual siphoning off of the collective's resources in the name of added value. What is for sale cannot have value. If it did it would not be sold.
If personal authority is a valid stance then death is inevitable. Therefore, objective reality is based on the value of death. Following this line of reasoning: subjective reality is based on the value of life.
I have just proven the title of this book, Life Matters.
The first threshold of comprehension is the transition from objectification to subjectification. Only then can I stand at cause and therefore be my own effect. By owning what is mine, and accepting its true value, I can remember what I purposely forgot.
Next chapter I hope to build up my confidence by down-playing my resistance enough to examine my core beliefs in detail. The darkness of unseen phantoms must be dispelled when brought to the light of awareness.
Above all else I wish to heal, even more than being right.
Seven
KARMA
autobiography, faith, choices, truth or consequences
Yoga
My past is littered with moments when I took on false beliefs while interpreting the meaning of certain life events. In my personal experience the most significant situations occurred at ages two, four, ten, twelve and seventeen. As I dig into the significance of these events I open up a can of worms that causes chaos in my present life. My particular set of false beliefs conflict with my present beliefs and as I stir the pot of my memory the conflict becomes more intense and debilitating. The confusion this work has created in my life is profound.
The Christmas of 2000, I had received the I Ching and a bundle of sticks. At the time I had not thought much of it and put it away. In the middle of March 2001, I decided to try them out, maybe they could give me some idea about where to turn. I only threw the sticks once. They called me mountain on mountain and suggested I try hatha yoga. At first I thought it was ridiculous but the next day I went out and bought a little paperback book on yoga. It was called: Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan. About fifty-six days later I would finish the program having become very proficient at the basic stances. Not six months later I would be teaching yoga classes every week. I still joke that I was a yoga master in another life. Yoga came very naturally to me. In fact, some of the yoga moves I had been practicing on my own without knowing it for many years.
April first, as I was nearing the end of my yoga tutoring period, I had a very vivid spiritual experience. It’s difficult to put the experience into words. For a moment I was filled with a sense of love and peace so profound that it overwhelmed me. It was a completely different experience, like nothing I had ever been exposed to before. I panicked. Basically, I was shown what living in the light of truth was like and then given the choice to stay or go. I chose to go. It was too soon for me, I was not ready for such a transformation. But that moment changed everything. It set into motion a series of events that would eventually lead me to give up my worldly possessions, my safety and security, and go follow my heart.
The first effect of this spiritual experience was a sudden, intense infusion of inspiration. I began composing poems, one after another for exactly forty days. In that time I wrote forty or so poems, all of a spiritual nature. I do not know how good they are to others but in my opinion they were by far my best poetry to date. I was certain I was on the right track and that soon I would be ready to join the light team.
I was way off, this was only the start of what I can only call a tormenting ordeal that would stretch through the next six years. It continues today but the experience has become far less tormenting. I’m not sure if that is because the experience has really changed or if I have just become used to the experience and resigned to my plight.
Three more years would pass before I made a drastic change in my life, virtually overnight. During those three years I practiced yoga vigorously everyday and went to yoga class twice a week. One day a week I would teach the class and the other day the real teacher would. I devoured hundreds of books on spirituality. I meditated and prayed. But I was still not happy.
In January, 2003, I enrolled in a yoga teacher’s training course. In the middle of February I had another profound experience. This time, it woke me from my sleep. Without going into a great deal of needless detail, the experience had to do with my work with Kundalini Yoga. That night, I woke up with this incredible feeling of ecstasy that moved up and down my spine. The only description I can think of is that I had a spiritual orgasm. For half an hour the chakra energy moved around my spine and I could only moan and giggle and squirm as the exquisite feeling continued. When it was over I felt purged of a great deal of negative energy. I felt light and free like never before.
By the end of February 2003, I had given up my half of our house, left most of my possessions behind, broke up with my girlfriend of ten years, moved to the big city into a one-bedroom apartment, started a new relationship with a feisty brunette named Val and I was completely awash in newness of every kind like some sort of mesmerizing daydream.
Val
I have opted for this particular summary style because it clearly outlines the pertinent and often salient themes in my life. It is not chronological. However, I do go into detail about a particular twenty-four hour period at the end of this chapter.
After the honeymoon phase, reality hit us like a ton of bricks. I called a good friend and he got me a job with the union working at the airport. It should have been a dream job and the greatest opportunity but I couldn’t keep my mind on work. Val would call me incessantly, then suddenly not answer her phone. There were days I’d come home from work and she would not be home, only to come in later in the evening and go straight to sleep without a word. Other days, she wouldn’t be home when I awoke. Sometimes Val was out for days at a stretch with no explanation. She’d come home and we wouldn’t talk for days, then we’d have a blowout and I’d pack my things and leave, only to come back again.
I am no saint. I like to party, beyond moderation even, sometimes - rarely. And maybe I have my demons, but they are moderated by another aspect of myself that refuses to stay down. I always drag myself back to the front lines and into battle again. I cannot stop, won’t. I will not give up! Not for long, anyway.
These three or four years are a blur of terrible misery and indescribable heights of pleasure. The chronology is hard to present linearly because it is not a factor in terms of the experience. The sense of the situation lay in the dynamics of the relationship between Val and myself. All events in this period were but means to that end. And the making of sense out of what is usually purposely excluded from making sense requires lessons that are not always interpreted as pleasant. Dedicated to truth, a relationship must necessarily encounter situations out of line with usual expectations. These unexplainable events must then be incorporated into a new world view because they do not fall within the range of the normal parameters of reality.
Our relationship is a course in forgiveness based on faith, where we are neither solely teacher or student, yet both. Its goal is to remember our minds are joined and are one. Our relationship is love incarnate, as are all relationships. For what is relationship but love sought and found. And while this truth goes unrecognized the searching for love attests to its existence. And what exists can be found. It is inevitable.
There is the basis of faith laid bare. It requires only one condition: that a concession be made, only a hypothetical ratification for now, in terms of not knowing what love is. I might have an inkling, a personal viewpoint about the subject but I might not know everything about it. Faith is the resting in and being at peace with the temporary position of not knowing everything there is to know about love. Yet by acknowledging my role as both student and teacher of love I recognize my hidden forgetfulness and its eventual remembrance. That is faith.
Faith may seem to waver, to be assaulted by forces bent on its dissolution, to be based on shaky ground. But mere semblance of reality will not long satisfy those engaged in the honest searching for truth. Faith in love is rewarded instantly. How soon I see its effects is a direct measure of my allegiance to truth. That faith in love has visible effects is faith. For love is the proof of the union of minds and of life beyond