Time for Yoda
Rich
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2000 23:41:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: ric...@thiemeworks.com
Yoda - that great guru puppet of the Star Wars stories - knew how to
wait patiently as cycles unwound and possibilities emerged with some
discernible shape from a sea of seeming chaos. That ability to wait
involved the principle of wu wei or "not doing," a "wise passivity," as
Wordsworth said, rather than mere inactivity - a kind of settling back
into the rocking chairs of our souls as we lean forward at the same time
with eager anticipation.
When it looked as if Luke Skywalker might not be up to the job, Yoda
said, "There is another," i.e. in a quantum universe, there are always
other possibilities waiting in the wings. Seeing how to create them is
the source of our real power. Our scripts, too, the ones we write for
our lives, include alternative endings, and we contain inside ourselves
an understudy for every role that we write. We are both star and
understudy, teacher and learner, and wisdom means knowing when it's time
for the star to step down and the understudy to step up:
When to catch the curl of a wave just as it breaks forth from the
formlessness of the surging sea.
Here we are, after the rise and sudden plunge and rise again of the
markets, surfing the currents of greed and fear that blew that bubble
near to bursting, popped it, blew it up again.
Pop. Puff. Pop. Puff.
Greed and fear move markets. Long-term investors know that we don't
manage money. We manage ourselves. We manage greed fear pride and hope,
we manage our sense of self-importance. Money is a blank screen onto
which we project the contents of our souls. Then we treat those
projections as if something other than ourselves is out there.
This is a good time to remember the wisdom of Yoda. Dot.coms are falling
all around us like the frog plague at the end of the movie "Magnolia."
Splat! Splat!
Reality is, after all, the final filter of our dreams. All excesses
sift through the filter of real things. But reality is never what we
think.
The net revolution will continue, of course, and the integration of a
new kind of human being into the electric web will continue as well. But
something else is being born, something we don't know how to talk about
yet ... the collective experience of multiple generations that look at
the world from multiple perspectives like facets of a fly's eyes.
Longevity will soon stretch our lifetimes so that three four five six
seven generations will occupy the same space, different perspectives
that must somehow become cells in a singular matrix glowing with the
wisdom and long view of a Yoda.
Or a Yodette. Like my online colleague, Kathleen Jacoby, author of the
Vision of the Grail (serialized at Planetlightworker.com) who recently
wrote:
"Living in Silicon Valley, where life and technology unfold at a
dizzying pace, I watch my daughters being consumed by the industry and
wonder where the idealic life is that we baby boomers envisioned. Being
in the center of the new Athens of the world, I see cracks in the
facade. People rush from activity to activity, overloaded,
over-stressed, unable to process a growing amount of information.
"We need time for reflection. We need moments of pause and poise. We
need observations that bring us back to soul purpose, reminders that we
can take what is streaming forward and choose to ride gently with
thoughtfulness, rather than jet ski upstream with nothing but dollar
signs in our eyes.
"I feel as though our age group has somehow abdicated a position without
giving a thought to the vacancy we're leaving. Well it should be that
new energy refuels the life blood of a nation ... however, we abdicated
too soon. The problem with our fading into the woodwork is that we have
left a vacancy of maturity that we've gained through years of reckoning
with life. We may not have the raw energy or money that the young here
have, but we do have a viewpoint that is needed.
"In Silicon Valley, the lack of soul is evident. I think it's time to
stand up and say, 'The Emperor has no clothes!'"
The voice of a minstrel, singing in the silicon wilderness.
Yoda had the viewpoint Kathleen evokes. He watched entire planets
explode as the evil Emperor surfed the currents of the dark side of the
force. Had he believed in fear (which is only faith turned inside out)
he would have been impotent to mentor young Luke. He had to believe in a
future and he had to believe in young Skywalker not blindly but because
he saw his capacity for greatness of soul.
Wander through any hacker gathering worthy of the name, eyes closed and
inner eyes open, and discern the essential excellence of the rising
tide. Not merely intelligence obsession with knowledge passion or
infinite curiosity but a gift of imagination and real soul power.
Yoda taught Luke levitation. Levitation is a way of saying that things
rise according to the energies that lift them. Yoda taught Luke to use
the Force. The Force is a way of saying that our hunger to engage with
mysteries and manifest spiritual power is intrinsic.
Glimpsing deeper things puts everything into perspective.
There are more things in more heavens, on more earths, than we can
imagine. Words like "miracle" fail to evoke what we see during moments
of clear seeing: that consciousness is a sea in which we cannot help but
swim, moving to the currents of our deeper intentions, deep below what
we think makes the wheels turn and the cycles arise, the motive and soul
power driving our real lives.
In a world of simulations, wise puppets make good mentors. Yoda knew
that the bow the arrow and the target are just one thing. That the river
curves to the contours of the earth. And that deep belief in the power
that binds and transforms, binds and transforms.
For AJ: always more than meets the eye.
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Michael Wallace
Love
Michael
Rich <rsm...@aloha.net> wrote in message news:38FD69...@aloha.net...
> Islands in the Clickstream. Time for Yoda - and Yodette. April 18 2000
> In a world of simulations, wise puppets make good mentors. Yoda knew
Windy
>
> It's great stuff, yet again... Thanks Sri Rich
>
> Love
>
> Michael
>
> Rich <rsm...@aloha.net> wrote in message news:38FD69...@aloha.net...
>
> > that the bow the arrow and the target are just one thing. That the river
> > curves to the contours of the earth. And that deep belief in the power
> > that binds and transforms, binds and transforms.
> >
Yoda layee huuuuuuu
Yes, I thought it was a great post also. Now, more please.
Windy
Diamond star
some how prevented that broker from getting
in touch with me so I could invest. I've neither gained, nor lost, am
neither for nor against, have no need or desire, no
regret nor remorse. May the Source be with you. Love, Rose
--
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