I visited the beautiful country of Colombia once.

I was living in Florida at the time and had recently reattained communication with two childhood friends, a brother and a sister, whom I hadn’t seen in over 13 years.  Of the brother I recalled many challenges on the tennis courts, he had been instrumental in my tennis development in that few people my age court equal me on the courts back then.  Of the sister I had fewer memories yet they were fond ones, of a very long phone conversation, with many silences, many words meant to simply fill up space and keep us connected.  Soon after that conversation she, her brother, their family left the small arabian paradise which I continued to call home for many years.

So it was with great joy that contact with them was reestablished in the internet era.  Talk about a visit was easy and as one thing led to another that visit materialized and I decided to spend 10 days, and the entrance into the new year of 2006, with them in Bogota, Colombia.

The view which the general population of Americans has about Colombia is not a very … let’s say, it is a very biased view.  And I’ll also say that that view is not one that encourages the American people to visit that country (unless they fantazise about being kidnapped, shot, mugged…).  Yet, having travelled plenty, I was aware of how misguided some people’s views of alien countries can be and I very much looked forward to stepping off the plane onto South American soil.

The small event that stays in my mind and which I’m about to recount was just one of the many events lived during my stay.  It is a sweet-and-sour event yet in no way was this taste the main one to my trip or even the one I left with… but it is one that my mind keeps accessing for some reason.

It took place one sunny evening as I walked by myself along the streets of central Bogota.  The friends I was visiting had to work and with a simple map I was thoroughly enjoying taking my time and observing both the people and the city.  I was relaxed and attentive, at peace and alert, curious and street-smart, and thankfully so.  I eyed the food vendors, the old statues, the random soldier fully equipped with even granades…, the way people were dressed, their mood, the mood of the city.

In the center of this city is a “palacio”, a building of high importance, surrounded by strikingly new-looking fence only interrupted for small entries where two guards stood.  I was told that at the main gate one could see a changing of the guards which was particularly interesting for tourists.  And it was while I was making my way along that fence, coincidentally right in front of one of the guards, towards the front gate that the event in question occurred.

In my state of observant awareness I couldn’t help but notice a pretty, sweet-looking girl walking in the opposite direction, in my direction, and as we crossed our eyes met and I may have even hinted at a smile.  Our bodies crossed and not a second had passed when I hear her voice calling me.  Surprised and curious I turn around and smile as I see her smiling, and making her way slowly towards me.  What was she saying I am not sure; she asked my name perhaps, maybe asked how I was doing, or maybe it was “where are you from”, yes, that was it.  And as I observed this Colombian belle in a curious, interested, and reticent way my peripheral vision caught sight of the erect and stoic guard to my left who, with the most slight of movements, (undoubtedly enhanced by the fact that, as most guards, he was an image of unmoving alertness) rotated his head to one side and back.  The child who is yearning to go out to play and whose mother tells him/her “go ask your father”; that child now stands observing the fathers’ face for the slightest of signs.  The slightest of signs.  And at that moment my gut knew and it was like a cool wind swept through me awakening what was dreaming.

“Gracias, tengo que irme” to the persistent girl whose temperament was rapidly shifting to a darker cloud; “who broke my spell?” cried the evil witch Maleficent…

I turned my back and continued on not looking back once like a fish that just managed to squirm through the holes of the fisherman’s net and whose body says “just walking along”.

An excerpt from the book Meeting the Shadow.  The text is by Michael Ventura.

“Which is the major difference between the expectations of a marriage and a relationship.  My experience of a relationship is two people more or less compulsively playing musical chairs with each other’s selected inner archetypes.  My tough street kid is romancing your honky-tonk angel.  I am your homeless waif and you are my loving mother.  I am your lost father and you are my doting daughter.  I am your worshiper and you are my goddess.  I am your god and you are my priestess.  I am your client and you are my analyst.  I am your intensity and you are my ground.  These are some of the garish of the patterns.  Animus, anima, bopping on a seesaw

These hold up well enough while the archetypal pairings behave.  But when the little boy inside him is looking for the mommy inside her and finds instead on this particular night a sharp-toothed analyst dissecting his guts.  When the little girl inside her is looking for the daddy inside him, and fids instead a pagan worshiper who wants a goddess to lay with, which induces her to become a little girl playacting a goddess to please the daddy who’s really a lecherous worshipper and…little girls can’t come.  Or if a woman is attracted to a macho-man who is secretly looking to be mothered: when a man’s sexual self is in the service of an interior little boy it’s not surprising that he can’t get it up or comes to quick.  Or they’re really not there at all, they’re masturbating, really, men in their little-boy psyches for whom the real woman is just a stand-in; while the woman who happens to be in the same bed, an extension of teir masturbation, is wondering why even though the moves are pretty good she doesn’t really feel slept with.  And why he turns away so quickly when it’s done.

On the other hand, teachers fuck pupils with excitement, analysts fuck clients with abandon, and people seeing each other, in bed, as gods and goddesses light up the sky – bu the psyche is a multiple and a shifting entity, and none of these compatible parirings hold stable for long.  The archetypal mismatches soon begin, and then it’s a disaster of confrontations that can take years not even to sort out (it would be worth years to get it all sorter out) but simply to exhaust itself and fail.  And then the cycle starts all over again with someone else.

My experience of a marriage is that all these same modes are present, but instinctively or consciously it becomes a case of two people running down each other’s inner archetypes, tackling them, seducing them, cajoling them, waiting them out making them talk, ‘fessing up to them, running from them, raping them, falling in love with some, hating others, getting to know some, making friends with some, hanging some in the closet on each other’s hooks — hooks on which hang fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, other loves, idols, fantasies, maybe even past lives, and true mythological consciousnesses that sometimes come to life within one with such force that we feel a thread that goes back thousands of years, even to other realms of being.

All of this is what we “marry” in the other, a process that goes on while we manage to earn a living, go to the movies, watch television, go to the doctor, walk on the Palisades, drive to Texas, follow the election, try to stop drinking, eat too much Haagen-Dazs.”

So, this past Friday, April 11th, there was this awesome African Music performance by a group called Agbedidi Jeliya which is based in Gainesville, Florida, at the University of Florida. And I am fortunate to be a part of this awesome group Agbedidi Jeliya as one of the djembe players!

The directors of Agbedidi Jeliya are: Abou Sylla & Mohamed DaCosta – excellent teachers at the University of Florida. Also performing are: Lansana Camara (on the Cora: a string instrument), Abou Sylla (visiting from Texas on the lead djembe), Aboubacar Soumar (on bass Cora and on the large drums).

I handed my video camera to a friend sitting in the front row, hoping to get a little bit of footage. He and his son ended up filming the whole thing and good footage!

The experience on stage was such a blast! Really high and joyous energy!! I hope you can get a feel for that while watching these clips.

Enjoy!!!!!

Part 1: this is the introduction to the group as well as the first part which is called Lambam: “Griots are West African poets, praise singers, and wandering musicians that represent a repository of the area-s rich oral traditions. Also called jeli or jali, they form a special and well-respected case in West African society. This piece is dedicated to the jeli themselves, honoring their dignity and pride in being griots.”

Part 2: This piece is called Mankan: “Literally “noise”, this piece consists of variations on the dematigalan rhythm. Led by the djembe drum, and accompanied by the balafons, it highlights the expressiveness of the drum section.

Part 3: This piece is called Fosson. “While only in second grade, Abou Sylla heard “Fosson” on the radio performed by one of the greatest balafon players of the time, Elhadj Jeli Sory Kouyate; it has been a favorite of Mr. Sylla, throughout his career. Here it will showcase the balafon players and the expressiveness of the instrument.”

Part 4: This piece is called Kuramissa. “This piece is dedicated to the cousin of Mohamed DaCosta, a courageous woman who recently gave birth to quadruplets.

Part 5: This piece is called Yankadi Makuru. “This piece is composed of two related rhythms from Guinea called yankadi (slow) and makuru (fast). Both are rhythms of seduction traditionally danced under the moonlight at parties where young people – mostly teenagers – gather to play and dance, representing a time in their lives in which increased freedom is gained from their parents.”

Part 6: This piece is called Djondjon. “Featuring a double-balafon solo by Abou Sylla, “Djondjon” is based on an ancient melody dedicated to those who have endured and overcome hardships such as war, political turmoil, and persecution.”

Part 7: This piece is called Wali. “This piece features “four brothers” from Guinea: Abou Sylla, Tassana Camara, Mohamed DaCosta, and (another) Abou Sylla. Wali translates as “work”, a suitable name for a piece that encourages just that: work is necessary and rewarding part of a healthy lifestyle, as opposed to laziness. The message here is to enjoy what you do and to do it well. The musicians themselves, of course, are examples of hard work and talent manifested in a successful career.”

Part 8: This piece is called Agbedidi. “Composed by Abou Sylla, this is a praise of the ensemble’s musicians and their dedication and abilities in learning challenging material quickly. The lyrics encourage listeners and musicians alike to embrace happiness through musical participation.”

The movie doesn’t seem to be embedded so here is the link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6YHWFBb3Sc

Went with a friend to the tattoo parlor and shot this picture that I enjoy.

I woke up with this song in my mind.  Enjoy!

“..make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy elegant.” – Moshe Feldenkrais

“Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation.” – Moshe Feldenkrais“

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were. “ – Kahlil Gibran

“Love is trembling happiness” – Kahlil Gibran

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” Kahlil Gibran

“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.” – Kahlil Gibran

“We create a safe, healing relationship in order to enable mindfulness.  We use mindfulness to enhance sensitivity.  We want sensitivity in order to go deep, to evoke experiences reflecting core emotional attitudes and beliefs.” – Ron Kurtz

“Each of us organizes to meet the world in our own way.  Like wind chimes in the breeze, the sounds evoked tell more about the instrument than the wind.  Evoked experiences are more about ourselves than the conditions that evoke them.”  - Ron Kurtz

“To gently name what is real here and now, to speak out simply, without arguing or proving, that is not force.  It is a wise and graceful use of the energies of the moment.  It calls forth what is true in the client.  And that is magic — the calling forth by naming.  It has the authority of truth, turth spoken cleanly, with no other motive than to be present and be a witness.”

I write this having just returned from three days spent at the “Art of Vinyasa” yoga conference.
I return with so many thoughts regarding so many issues… this is my futile attempt at writing them down. Firstly I recall my intention for doing this, for writing these things down. This is for others to see but, at the same time, not. This is for me to remember who I am, was, and what I was going through but at the same time not.
This is to honor the experience I went through, and, in writing down my thoughts, to recall what it is that I went through.
This is to help me organize my thoughts and thus plan my next step. and to take it.

This conference came at a time of great change for earlier that week I ceased to be in an intimate relationship. My thoughts, thus, hovered around questions such as “why did it end?”.
The outcome of any relationship is due to the actions of both (in the case of two) people. Thus, what could I have done such that it would have resulted in a better outcome? Is breaking up a bad outcome when both people went into the relationship wanting to make it last? Should it not be possible to resolve any and all issues?
My questions were endless and my doubts in lasting, healthy, relationships were growing by the minute.

With such questions in mind I headed toward Miami. I must admit that my outlook on this conference was not good. Despite being involved in yoga for over a decade, my idea of vinyasa was that of a sequence of poses done quickly and repetitively with higher risk of injury due to the little attention being paid to the form in each posture. … The fact that the conference was being held at the Trump beach hotel did not help remove my fears that I was going to regret having spent so much money and time for this.
I was somewhat wrong.

Shiva Rea was the teacher for my first class. I was already slightly late and as I walked in everyone was performing some sort of african-dance to jungly music as she talked on the microphone… way too much like an aerobics class. I pushed back my gag reflex and told myself that if I am going to swallow a frog I may as well swallow a big one (in other words: go with the flow). After generating some good body heat we started to do some flowing yoga poses, the only thing that really kept me interested was the fact that many of them were new to me. I focused on the poses and on the sun that was shining straight on me, causing to sweat profusely (I always wanted to use that word).

Soon I was so soaked in sweat that I had to remove my shirt and use a towel I happened to have with me. The music changed, the flow changed, Shiva Rea masterly oriented the poses and I found myself deeply engaged in the session, the body being my tool for present awareness. When savasana (relaxation) came about I was ready. This was an excellent physical-oriented yoga session. (Later that day I was to experience an even more liberating session led by Shiva Rea, this time of Trance Dance)
Without more than 10 minutes to replenish my bodily fluids I found myself in my second 2 hour session, this time the teacher was Jonny Kest who only stood out from the crowd due to his brown “Yoga Teacher” shirt. With the aid of numerous factoids such as “did you know that the majority of americans will go this whole week without bending back once?!”, “they just published this study that…”, Jonny led us through another excellent, demanding, asana routine, with strong emphasis on the breath.

My doubts were being quieted, the teachers were very good and I was learning a lot in terms of asanas and exposure to different teaching styles. Teacher after teacher I kept on getting pleasantly surprised. Each teacher had enthusiasm, expertise, and, more importantly, joy. Each teacher was happy to be there, to teach, to talk to the participants. I found very little teacher-ego and plenty of joy-of-living.
Sincere yoga practitioners are some of the very best people to be around and I enjoyed the intervals between sessions (meeting yoga-related people in the hotel and at the beach) as much as the practice.

I was, however, to be further surprised. By the end of the second day (that is 4×2 + 3×2 = 14 hours of Hatha Vinyasa yoga) I found myself returning to questions I had before the conference. In particular, what do I want to teach people when they come to a yoga class? Just a routine of poses? Just a good aware feeling? The physical routines bring the body to a great point but that is not all I want. In fact, I had been shying away from intense hatha yoga sessions and the struggle to conquer new poses because that is all it is… a struggle for circus tricks.
So the third day was such a blessing.

When I signed up for the classes I had zero knowledge of the teachers yet I managed to chose two back-to-back sessions, for the last day, both led by students of the great Krishnamacharya. Both teachers were very lucid people and both centered their sessions around the essence of doing yoga. The reason for doing yoga.
Both teachers began with a simple, enlightening and centering discussion on yoga and followed this up with a purposful, intention- and heart-centered, set of asanas. The first one left me dazed, the second finished me off and had me nearly in tears. In short, this was an amazing pilgrimage of a weekend.
I returned to my home with renewed energy and motivation for my practice and for connecting with love to all I meet.

From the physical effort to the dispelling of spiritual darkness, I was led through a vinyasa, a journey for which I, with bowed head and palms together, thank every teacher, yogi, and yogini I came in contact with, straight from the anahatha – my heart center.

“People with damage to the prefrontal cortex (behind the bridge of the nose) find it difficult to know where to point the spotlight of attention. A college basketball player with damage to this area of the brain might be very skilled athletically but would be quite frustrating to watch. In the last seconds of a close game, she might decide to put the ball down and tie her shoes more tightly, or chat with the fans in Row 3.”

“When information is high in actiavtion potential it is “energized” and ready to be used; when it is low in activation potential it is unlikely to be used to selevt and interpret information in one`s environment. Accessibility is determined not only by the self-relevance of a category but also by how recently it has been encountered.”
“Another determinant of accessibility is how often a concept has been used in the past. People are creatures of habit, and the more they have used a particular way of judging the world in the past, the more energized that concept will be.”

“One of the most enduring lessons from social psychology is that like Mrs. Reed, people go to great lengths to view the world in a way that maintains a sense of well-being. We are masterly spin doctors, rationalizers, and justifiers of threatening information.” This is similar to our biological immune system- a psychological immune system.
“People who grow up in Western cultures and who have an independent view of the self tend to promote their sense of well-being by exaggerating their superiority over others. People who grow up in East Asian cultures and have a more interdependent sense of self are more likely to… engage in tactics that promote a positive self-view, because they have less investment in the self as an entity separate from their social group.” I guess, someone who sees themself as connected with nature will have an even lesser need to promote their sense of well-being through exaggerating their superiority over others.

“Sometimes we act on the “feel-good” motive quite consciously and deliberately, such as avoiding an acquaintance who is always criticizing us, or trying to convince ourselves that we failed to get a promotion not because we were unqualified, but because the boss was an insensitive ox.”
“The conflict between the need to be accurate (in interpreting a past situation) and the desire to feel good about ourselves is one of the major battlegrounds of the self, and how this battle is waged and how it is won are central determinants of who we are and how we feel about ourselves.”

“If people could think efficiently withough being conscious, why did consciousness evolve? it is tempting to conclude that it conferred a marked survival advantage, to explain why it has become a universal feature of the human min. Although on the face of it this might seem obvious, it is acutally and unsettled questions that is the topic of much debate.”
Descartes was wrong on two fronts – the mind is not separate from the body, and consciousness and the mind are not the same thing.
“Philosophers are wrangling, with renewed energy, over age-old questions: How can the subjective state of consciousness arise from a physical brain? What is the nature of conscious experience? Can we ever hope to understand what it is like to be another species or even another human? Are humans the only species that possess consciousness? Does consciousness have a function, and if so, what is it?“

“Recent work by Daniel Wegner and Thalia Wheatley suggests an answer: the experience of conscious will is often an illusion akin to the “third variable” problem in correlational data. We often experience a thought followed by an action, and assume it was the thought that caused that action. In fact a third variable, a non-conscious intention, might have produced both the conscious thought and the action.
…
Wegner and Wheatley acknowledge that conscious will is not always an illusion, just that is can be.”

“It is well known that people can perform many behaviors quickly, effortessly, and with little conscious attention. once we have learned such complex motor behaviors, we can perform them better when we are on automatic pilot and are not consciously thinking about what we are doing. The moment I begin to think about what my pinkie and index fingers are doing as I type these words, typos result. There is a term for this in athletics: when a player is “unconscious,” she is performing at an optimal level without any awareness of exactly what she is doing. She is in the zone.”
I can definitely relate to this. Tennis is a sport which allows for enough time before each stroke for the conscious to engage. When this happens I feel that my stroke becomes more restricted, and awkward. The best tennis playing I have done is when I am unconscious. I also feel that fluctuations throughout a long tennis match may also be associated to fluctuations in the level to which one engages the conscious mind in the process.

(page52 is above) (page 87 is below)

I particularly like the example: “…concerning the role of consciousness, such as whether it is similar to the child at a video arcade who turns the steering wheel on a racing-car game without putting any money into it, unaware that she is viewing a demonstration program, which is not at all influenced by her conscious intentions and goals – an agent that thinks she is in control of the action but really isn`t.”

“When choosing a career, for example, it would be to people`s advantage to know whether their nonconscious personalities were better suited for a life as a lawyer, salesperson, or circus performer.
There is very little research on the consequences of having disparate conscious and nonconscious “selves” that are out of synch.
…
Some individuals, however, did have nonconscious and conscious motives that corresponded, and these people showed greater emotional well-being than people whose goals were out of synch. In one study, students` nonconscious and conscious goals were assessed at the beginning of the semester and their emotional well-being tracked for the next several weeks. The students whose conscious goals matched their nonconscous goals showed an increase in emotional well-being as the semester progressed. The students whose conscious goals did not match their nonconscious goals showed a decrease in emotional well-being over the same period. It appears to be to people`s advantage to develop conscious theories that correspond at least somewhat with the personality of their adaptive unconscious.
Before seeing how this might be done, we need to take a look at other aspects of the adaptive unconscious that people typically overlook, besides the nature of their personalities. For example, how good are people at recognizing the causes of their feelings, judgments, and behavior?”
This is getting very interesting. It is impressive how reading such as this is not required in schools. This is like a map to the human mind (to parts of it at least) teaching people about themselves. To not know these things and go about one`s life and suffering the conscious/nonconscious clash… is torture!! Those who are knowledgable should be forced to teach the ignorant!!!

“Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”
… “He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving implied to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life.”

---

“Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one`s capacity to love. Hence the problem is how to be loved, how to be lovable.”

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“The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed is we want to elarn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.
What are the necessary steps in learning any art?
The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice.”

---

“Man – of all ages and cultures – is confronted with the solution of one and the same questions: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend on`s own individual life and find at-onement. The question is the same for primitive man living in caves, for nomadic man taking care of his flocks, for the peasant in Egypt, the Phoenician trader, the Roman soldier, the medieval monk, the Japanese samuray, the modern clerk and factory hand. The question is the same, for it springs from the same ground: the human situation, the conditions of human existence. The answer varies. The question can be answered by animal worship, by human sacrifice or military conquest, by indulgence in luxury, by ascetic renunciation, by obsessional work, by artistic creation, by the love of God, and by the love of Man… The answers depend, to some extent, on the degree of individuation which an individual has reached.”
note: I-ness – It is very interesting how interlinked the art of loving is with enlightenment. The “problem” or condition (human condition) which is being tackled or not tackled but of which the human has become aware is the same. The human became aware of his condition of separateness and thus falls into sado-masochistic, orgiastic, identification with groups of other humans, routines, nine-to-five activity, and other acts.

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“Equality today means “sameness,” rather than oneness”"
“Equality is bought at this very price: women are equal because they are not different any more. The proposition of Enlightenment philosophy, l`ame n`a pas de sexe, the soul has no sex, has become the general practice. The polarity of the sexes is disappearing, and with it erotic love, which is based on this polarity. Men and women become the same not equals as opposite poles. Contemporary society preaches this ideal of unindividualized equality because it needs human atoms, each onte the same, to make them function in a mass aggregation, smoothly, without friction; all obeying the same commands, yet everybody being convinced that he is following his own desires.”

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“Man becomes a “nine to fiver,” he is part of the labor force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative,…Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction. Fun is routinized in similar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theater owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties. From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening-all activities are routinized, and prefabricated.”

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“In contrast to symbiotic union, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one`s integrity, one`s individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”
- note: the author mentions two forms of symbiotic love, the passive form: masochism (the masochistic person escapes from the unbearable feeling of isolation and separateness by making himself part and parcel of another person who directs him, guides him, protects him), and the active form: sadism (the sadistic person wants to escape from his aloneness and his sense of imprisonment by making another person part and parcel of himself)”.
- note: Eliade Mircea also writes about this paradox in his book: “The Two and the One”. In it the union of man and woman symbolises the return to divinity, before falling from heaven, a state in which there is no male and female. The humans can re-attain that state by sex and, more symbolically, marital union. The concept of marriage becomes one of uniting the two sexes and creating one entity with no (yet, at the same time, both) sexes.

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“What is not taken into account is the motivation of activity. Take for instance a man driven to incessant work by a deep sense of insecurity and loneliness; or another driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a “passivity” because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the “actor”. On the other hand, a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be “passive”, becausehe is not “doing” anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence.”

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“In the exercise of an active affect, man is free, he is the master of his affect; in the exercise of a passive affect, man is driven, the object of motivations of which he himslef is not aware. Thus Spinoza arrives at the statement that virtue and power are one and the same. Envy, jelousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of a human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as the result of a compulsion.”

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“Giving is the highest expression of potency. In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.”
… “He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving implied to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life.”

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“If you love without calling forth love, that is if your love as such does not produce love, if by means of an expression of life as a loving person you do not make of yourself a loved person, then your love is impotent, a misfortune.”
- note: that sucks… a misfortune!?

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“Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love”
…
“One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves.”

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“Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respect is possible only if I have achieved independence; if I can stand and walk without needing crutches, without having to dominate and exploit anyone else.”

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“To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge. knowledge would be empty if it were not motivated by concern.
…
I may know, for instance, that a person is angry, even if he does not show it overtly; but I may know him more deeply than that; … then I know that his anger is only the manifestation of something deeper, and I see him as anxious and embarrassed, that is, as the suffering person, rather than as the angry one.”

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“Thus far I have spoken of love as the overcoming of human separateness, as the fulfillment of the longing for union. But above the universal, existential need for union rises a more specific, biological one: the desire for union between the masculine and feminine poles.”
…
“Man – and woman – finds union within himself only in the union of his female and his male polarity. This polarity is the basis for all creativity.”
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“The male-female polarity is also the basis for interpersonal creativity. This is obvious biologically in the fact that the union of sperm and ovum is the basis for the birth of a child. But in the purely psychic realm it is not different; in the love between man and woman, each of them is reborn.
The same polarity of the male and female principle exists in nature…in the polarity of the two fundamental functions, that of receiving and that of penetrating. It is the polarity of the earth and raon, of the river and the ocean, of night and day, of darkness and light, of matter and spirit.

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“The masculine character can be defined as having the qualities of penetration, guidance, activity, discipline and adventurousness; the feminine character by the qualities of productive receptiveness, protection, realism, endurance, motherliness. (It must always be kept in mind that in each individual both characteristics are blended, but with the preponderance of those appertaining to “his” or “her” sex.) Vey often if the masculine character traits of a man are weakened because emotionally he has remained a child, he will try to compensate for this lack by the exclusive emphasis on his male role in sex. The result is the Don Juan, who needs to prove his male prowess in sex beacuse he is unsure of his masculinity in a characterological sense. When the parallysis of masculinity is more extreme, sadism (the use of force) becomes the main – a perverted – substitute for masculinity. If the feminine sexuality is weakened or perverted, it is transformed in masochism, or possessiveness.

When ones` objective becomes to learn about him/herself then one finds infinite ways to do so. Here I tell the tale of one of these explorations into knowing myself in the hopes that others will also feel the same yearning which is curiosity, still alive.
and i looked out at the sea the ocean i had just been swimming there, it was full of people populating solely the first ten meters of water… beyond that – not a soul i had just been swimming there and had swam out to at least 30 meters… alone in the deep water. every now and then i would look down into the water looking for a tell-tale shadow of some hidden “thing”… a shark… a jellyfish… a manta ray… a plastic bag… something that could unexpectedly brush against my body and make me freak out. imagination you know that you have several meters of water underneath you, you have no idea what is in there… how can you NOT be slightly wigged out?! many things live in the water and in this wavy section of ocean there is so much stuff attention due to the human activity… obviously, if i was a fish i would be close to the shore so i could get-me-some. i sat on the beach looking out to the ocean and thinking about how this did scare me. i thought of the image of a starving homeless child which i had seen in a national geographic magazine. i looked out to the ocean and wondered how much courage i would need to swim out to the yellow floating buoy in the distance… much further than i had gone before… if i was a fish i would be beside that buoy waiting for something to pass by me…… a solitary yellow floating buoy in the middle of the ocean… no-one around it, not even close! i recalled my mother always saying that i was too scared for certain things. i recalled the stories of lives that came to an end with so much ease and so abruptly… i recalled images of courage i had once seen but particularly images of helplessness. i had a choice here, i was looking at the buoy and that was beyond my limit. my courage limit. i could stay on the sand and get a job, get married, settle down, grow mentally old, and die or i could go beyond my limit, face a challenge by choice, bring Life into this day, toil with creation and destruction i decided to swim to the buoy walked over to the lifeguard and asked how far it was 250m sat down and asked myself again: why am i doing it for a minute i was unsure, the reason did not jump to mind, it was confused in images of triumph and of others seeing me swim so far out… looking in awe… slowly i brought back the reason – to bring Life into this day; to not be lazy – to defy laziness; to honour those who cannot choose; to make me strong in the next circumstance when i will be faced with fear. i swam into the water and, without looking back once, swam to the buoy. yes i did look down several times and my imagination did not stop once but it was the imagination that i was feeding off… without it i would not be facing my limit. I wanted it to be alive, to conjure scenario after scenario. sitting on the sand again, looking at the buoy where i had been just minutes before i had felt alive i had defied laziness … my eyesight glanced past the buoy and for the first time i saw the Ocean. I saw the Ocean as I had never known it before. the ocean not a vast body of water filled with creatures of all shapes an sizes – so much more the ocean how it continued how its extense and depth were an indication of how much more i had to learn about myself the buoy of knowledge was now at 250 meters… my eyesight trailed off to the horizon beyond which the ocean still continued…