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Hello all,
I'm reading a wonderful book, "Spirituality and
Mental Health Breakthrough" edited by Phil Barker and Poppy Buchanan.
Phil and Poppy are a great couple. Phil was a
professor of mental health nursing and Poppy a social worker. They often
come to Australia and talk about mental health issues as 'spiritual emergencies'
- which appeals to me no end. Phil has little round glasses, a long beard
and a long pigtail, wears black, has rainbow socks and red clogs and speaks
with a delightful Scottish accent. Totally delightful and totally
respectful and kind about our humanity, in whatever form it takes.
I'm reading a chapter by a David Brandon, a
professor of community care about "meaning". He writes:
"At the basis of all healing, for which we are
simply a vehicle, is increasing self-awareness and compassion towards others.
Nothing very special. This asks that we are increasingly gentle with ourselves
and with others; that we recognise in our hearts our connectedness; that we
surrender our different images of perfection as a deluded measure of the world
and see it with honesty and love. As Sawaki Roshi commented: 'everybody is in
his own dream. The discrepencies that exist between the dreams are the problem".
Or perhaps those discrepencies are the flashpoints,
the point of paradox where all change is possible?
Pax, Carolyn (Hastie)
"As a single footstep will not make a path in the
earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep
physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must
think over and over again the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives"
Henry David Thoreau |
