Vixey’s Pawprints

Archive for October, 2005

# 104 Witches & Pardon

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Witches and pardon

   On
31 October 2004, resorting to a feudal law that was abolished the
following month, the town of Prestonpans in Scotland granted official
pardon to 81 persons – and their cats – executed for practicing
witchery in the 16th and 17th centuries.
   According to the official spokesman for the Barons of
Prestoungrange and Dolphinstoun, “most of them had been condemned
without any concrete proof – based only on the witnesses of the
accusation, who declared that they felt the presence of evil spirits.”
   There is no point in recalling once more all the excess of the
Inquisition, with its torture chambers and bonfires of hate and
vengeance. But there is one thing that is very intriguing to me in this
news item.
   The town and the 14th Baron of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun
are “granting pardon” to the people who were brutally executed. Here we
are in the heart of the 21st century and the descendants of the real
criminals, those who put innocent people to death, still have the right
to “grant pardon”.
   In the meantime, a new witch hunt is beginning to gain ground.
This time the arm is no longer red-hot iron, but rather irony or
repression. All those who, in developing a gift (generally discovered
by chance), dare to speak of their capacity, are mostly either looked
on with suspicion or else prohibited by their parents, husbands and
wives to say anything about it. Having interested myself from an early
age in what they call the “occult sciences”, I came into contact with
many such people.
   I believed in charlatans, of course. I dedicated time and
enthusiasm to “masters” that later on dropped their masks, revealing
the total void in which they found themselves. Irresponsibly, I took
part in certain sects and practiced rituals for which I had to pay a
high price. All this in on behalf of a quest that is absolutely natural
to man: the answer to the mystery of life.
   But I also met many people who were truly capable of dealing with
forces that were far beyond my understanding. I saw time being altered,
for example. I saw operations without anesthesia, and on one of these
occasions (precisely a day that I had woken up with many doubts about
man’s unknown power) I placed my finger inside the incision made with a
rusty pocket knife. Believe it as you wish – or ridicule it if that is
the only way of reading what I am writing – I have seen metal being
changed, cutlery twisted, lights shining in the air around me, because
somebody said that would happen (and it did). I was almost always with
witnesses, generally skeptical. In most cases these witnesses went on
being skeptical, always thinking that it was all just a very clever
“trick”. Others said it was “the work of the devil”. Finally, a few
believed that they were witnessing phenomena that went beyond human
comprehensio! n.
   I have seen this in Brazil, France, England, Switzerland, Morocco,
and Japan. And what happens to most people who manage to, let us say,
interfere with the “immutable” laws of nature? Society always considers
them as marginal phenomena: if they cannot explain, then they do not
exist. The vast majority of these people also fail to understand why
they are capable of doing astonishing things. And for fear of being
labeled charlatans, they end up suffocated by their own gifts.
   None of them are happy. They all await the day when they can be
taken seriously. They all await a scientific answer to their own powers
(and in my opinion I do not think that is the solution). Many hide
their potential and end up suffering – because they could help the
world, and they do not manage to. Deep down I feel that that they are
also waiting for the “official pardon” for being so different.
   Separating the wheat from the chaff, and not growing disheartened
by the giant amount of charlatanism, I feel that we should ask
ourselves once more: what are we capable of?
   And then go out and seriously develop our immense potential.

New book
“The Zahir” is being published all over the world this year. Click here for more information.

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# 103 Manuel

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Manuel is an important and necessary man
   Manuel needs to be busy. Otherwise he feels that life has no
meaning, that he is wasting his time, that society has no need for him,
nobody loves him, nobody wants him.
   So as soon as he wakes up e has a whole set of tasks to do: watch
the news on the television (something may have happened during the
night), read the newspaper (something may have happened yesterday), ask
his wife not to let the children be late for school, get the car, a
taxi, a bus, the subway, but always concentrated, looking into the
vacuum, consulting his watch, if possible making a few calls on his
cell phone – and making sure that everyone sees that he is an important
man, a man useful to the world.
   Manuel arrives at work and starts to pore over the pile of paper
that awaits him. If he is an employee, he does everything possible for
the boss to notice that he arrived on time. If he is the boss, he sets
them all to work right away; if there are no important tasks to do,
Manuel will see to developing some, creating some, implementing a new
plan, establishing new lines of action.
   Manuel goes to lunch – but never alone. If he is the boss, he sits
down with his friends, discusses new strategies, speaks badly of the
competitors, always keeps a card hidden up his sleeve, complains (with
a touch of pride) about being overworked. If Manuel is an employee, he
also sits down with his friends, complains about the boss, says he is
working a lot of overtime, claims in despair (and with a touch of
pride) that so much at the firm depends on him.
   Manuel – boss or employee – works the whole afternoon. From time
to time he looks at his watch, it’s time to go home but he still has a
detail to solve here, a document to sign there. He is an honest man; he
wants to justify his salary, what others expect of him, the dreams of
his parents who went to such great pains to give him the necessary
education.
   Finally he returns home. He takes a shower, gets into some
comfortable clothes and sits down to have dinner with his family. He
asks the children about school, his wife how she spent the day. Now and
again he talks about his work, just to serve as an example – because he
does not like to bring worries home. Dinner over, the children – who
are not the least bit interested in examples, duties or any such things
– immediately leave the table and go to sit in front of the computer.
Manuel too goes to sit down in front of that old apparatus from his
childhood called the television. Again he watches the news (something
may have happened in the afternoon).
   He always goes to bed with some technical book on the bedside
table – whether boss or employee, he knows that the competition is
great and that if you do not keep up, you run the risk of losing your
job and then have to face the worst of all curses: unemployment.
   He talks to his wife for a while – after all, he is a gentle,
hardworking and loving man who cares for his family and is ready to
defend it in any circumstances. Sleep comes soon and Manuel falls
asleep knowing that the next day he will be very busy, so he needs to
recoup his energies.
   That night Manuel has a dream. An angel asks him: “Who do you do this?” He replies that he is a responsible man.
   The angel then asks: “Would you be able to stop just for fifteen
minutes during the day and look at the world, at yourself, and just do
nothing?” Manuel says that he would love to, but he does not have the
time for that. “You’re trying to fool me,” says the angel. “Everybody
has the time for that, what they lack is courage. Work is a blessing
when it helps us to think about what we are doing. But is becomes a
curse when its only use is to prevent us from thinking about what our
life means.”
   Manuel wakes up in the middle of the night, covered in a cold
sweat. Courage? How can a man who sacrifices himself for his family not
have the courage to stop for fifteen minutes?
   Best to go back to sleep, it’s only a dream, such questions lead nowhere, and tomorrow is going to be a very busy day.

Second chapter: Manuel is a free man
   Manuel has worked for 30 years non-stop, gives his children an
education, sets a good example, devotes his entire time to work, and
never wonders: “Is there any meaning to what I am doing?” His sole
concern is to know that the busier he is, the more important he will be
in the eyes of society.
   His children grow up and leave home, he is promoted at work, then
one day he is given a watch or a pen in recognition of all those years
of dedication, the friends shed a tear or two, and the long-expected
moment arrives: he is retired, free to do whatever he likes!
   The first few months, every now and again he pays a visit to the
office where he worked, chats with the old friends, and relishes the
pleasure of doing what he has always dreamed of: sleeping late. He goes
for walks on the beach or in town, then there is the house in the
country he managed to buy with so much sweat, discovers gardening and
little by little penetrates the mystery of the plants and flowers.
Manuel has time, all the time in the world. He travels, using part of
the money he has managed to put aside. He visits museums, in the space
of two hours learns what painters and sculptors from different eras
took centuries to develop, but at least he has the feeling that he is
improving his culture. He takes hundreds, thousands of pictures and
sends them to friends – after all, they have to know how happy he is!
   Some more months go by. Manuel learns that gardens do not follow
exactly the same rules as men – what he has planted is going to take a
while to grow, and it is use trying to see if the rosebush has buds
yet. In a moment of sincere reflection he discovers that all that he
has seen on his travels was a landscape outside the window of a tourist
bus, monuments that are now stored away on 6×9 photos, but the truth is
that he felt no special emotion – he was more concerned about telling
his friends than he was in living the magic experience of finding
himself in a foreign country.
   He still watches all the newsreels on television, reads more
newspapers (because he has more time), considers himself to be a very
well-informed person, capable of discussing things that he did not the
time before to study.
   He looks for someone to share his opinions – but they are all
immersed in the river of life, working, doing something, envying Manuel
his freedom and at the same time happy to be useful to society, to be
“busy” at something important.
   Manuel seeks for comfort in his children. They always treat him
with great affection – he has been an excellent father, an example of
honesty and dedication – but they too have other worries, although they
consider Sunday lunch a duty.
   Manuel is a free man, enjoys a reasonable financial situation, is
well-informed, has an impeccable past, but what now? What to do with
all this freedom, won with such hardship? Everyone greets him, everyone
praises him, but no-one has any time for him. Little by little Manuel
begins to feel sad and useless – despite all the years he has spent
serving the world and his family.
   One night an angel appears in his dream: “What have you done with
your life? Did you try to live it according to your dreams?”
   Manuel wakes up in a cold sweat. What dreams? This was his dream:
to have a diploma, to get married, to have children, to give them an
education, to retire, to travel. Why was the angel bothering him with
all these senseless questions?
   Another long day begins: the newspapers, the news on the TV, the
garden and lunch. Sleep a little, do whatever you feel like doing and
at that very moment discover that you do not feel like doing anything.
Manuel is a free and sad man, one step away from depression, because he
was always too busy to think about the meaning of life, while the years
flowed by under the bridge. He remembers the lines of a poem: “he
passed through life/but did not live.”
But it is too late to accept that, so better change the subject.
Freedom, conquered with so much struggling, is just exile in disguise.

End: Manuel goes to Paradise
   In the two preceding columns I analyzed Manuel’s life, how he was
always busy and finding that work – whatever the work may be – gives
life a meaning, but never wondering what that meaning might be.
   Later on Manuel retires. For a while he enjoys the freedom of not
having to wake up at a certain time and being able to use his time to
do whatever he pleases. But soon he falls into depression: he feels
useless, far removed from the society he has helped to build, abandoned
by his now grown-up children, unable to understand the meaning of life
– since he never bothered to ask himself the famous question: “What am
I doing here?”
   Well, one day our dear, honest, dedicated Manuel ends up dying –
as will happen to all the Manuels, Paulos, Marias and Monicas in this
life. And here I resort to the words of Henry Drummond, whose brilliant
book “The Supreme Gift” describes what happens from this point on:

   “All
of us at some moment have asked the same question as every other
generation: “What is the most important thing in our existence?”
   We want to use our days in the best possible way, for nobody else
can live our lives for us. So we need to know where we should direct
our efforts, what is the supreme objective to be met.
   We are used to hearing that the most important treasure in
spiritual life is faith. Many centuries of religion rest on this simple
word. Do we hold faith to be the most important thing in the world?
Well, we are quite wrong.
   In his epistle to the Corinthians, chapter XIII, Saint Paul takes
us to the early days of Christianity. He ends by saying: “And now
abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is
charity.”
   This is not some superficial opinion of the author of these words,
Saint Paul. After all, talking about Faith a moment before, in the same
letter, he said: “And though I have all faith, so that I could remove
mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” Paul did not avoid the
question; on the contrary, he compared faith and charity and concluded:
“(…) the greatest of these is charity.”

   Matthew
offers us a classic description of the Day of Final Reckoning: the Son
of God sits on a throne and like a shepherd separates the goats from
the sheep.
   At that moment the great question for human beings will not be: “How did I live?” but rather: “How did I love?”
   The final test of all quests for salvation will be Love. No
account will be taken of what we did, what we believed in, what we
achieved. None of this will be asked of us. What we will be asked is
how we loved our neighbor. The mistakes we have made will not even be
remembered. We will be judged for the good we have failed to do.
Because keeping Love locked up within ourselves is to go against the
spirit of God, it proves that we never knew Him, that He loved us in
vain, and that His Son died to no avail.”

In
this case, our Manuel is saved at the moment of his death, because
although he never gave any meaning to his life, he was capable of
loving, providing for his family, and doing what he did with dignity.
However, although it is a happy ending, the rest of his days on earth
were very complicated.
Repeating a phrase I heard from Shimon Peres at the World Forum in
Davos: “optimist and pessimist both end up dying. But they each use
their lives in a completely different manner.”

New book
“The Zahir” is being published all over the world this year. Click here for more information.

www.warriorofthelight.com

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# 102 How Do We Survive

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

It is all very well for us to try to improve our health, our
standard of living and our relation with nature, but I am beginning to
think we are overdoing it a little.
   In the mail they have sent me three liters of products that
substitute milk; a Norwegian company would like to know if I am
interested in investing in the production of this new type of food,
since, according to specialist David Rietz, “ALL (his capitals) cow
milk contains 59 active hormones, lots of fat, colesterol,dioxins,
bacterias and viruses”.
   I think of the calcium that when I was a child my mother told me
was good for the bones, but the specialist already has an answer for
me: “Calcium? How do cows manage to acquire enough calcium for their
large bone structure? From plants!” Of course, the new product is made
on the basis of plants, and milk is condemned based on an endless
number of studies carried out in a variety of institutes all over the
world.
   How about proteins? David Rietz is implacable: “I know they call
milk ‘liquid meat’ (I have never heard this _expression, but he must
know what he is talking about) on account of the high dose of protein
it contains. But proteins prevent calcium being absorbed by the
organism. Countries that have a protein-rich diet also have a high rate
of osteoporosis (lack of calcium in the bones).”
   In the afternoon my wife sends me a text she found on the Internet:
   “People who are now between 40 and 60 years old used to go about
in cars that did not have safety belts, head rests or airbags. Children
were left loose in the back seat, having a good time jumping around.
Cradles were painted in bright colors that are now considered “dubious”
because they could contain lead or some other dangerous element.”
   I, for example, am part of a generation that built the famous
ball-bearing carts (I do not know how to explain this to today’s
generation – let’s say they were metal balls held between two iron
arcs) and we would roll down the hilly streets of Botafogo using our
shoes as brakes, falling, hurting ourselves, but ever so proud of our
high-speed adventure.
   The text goes on:
   “There were no cellular phones, our parents had no way of knowing
where we were: how could that be possible? Children were never right,
they were always being punished, but even so they did not have
psychological problems of rejection or lack of love. At school there
were good students and bad students: the good ones passed, the bad ones
had to repeat the year. This was not a reason for consulting a
psychotherapist – they just had to repeat the year.”
   And even so we survived with some scratched knees and few traumas.
Not only did we survive, but we also fondly remember the time when milk
was not poison, when children had to solve their problems without any
help, fought when they had to, and spent a great part of the day
without electronic games, inventing their own games with their friends.

   But let us go back to the topic of the column: I decided to try
the new miraculous product that substitutes the killer milk. I did not
get past the first sip. I asked my wife and our maid to try it, without
explaining what it was: they both said they had never tasted anything
as foul in their life.
   I am worried about the children of tomorrow, with their electronic
games, parents with mobile phones, psychotherapists helping at each
defeat and – above all – having to drink this “magic potion” that will
keep them free of cholesterol, osteoporosis, 59 active hormones, and
toxins.
   The will live with lots of health, lots of equilibrium, and when
they grow up they will discover milk (by that time, perhaps it will be
banned by law). Maybe in the year 2050 a scientist will endeavor to
rescue something that has been consumed since time began.
   Or will we have to get our milk from drug dealers?

New book
“The Zahir” is being published all over the world this year. Click here for more information.

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# 101 While I Wander Through The World

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Prague, 1981
   Once, in the winter of 1981, I was walking with my wife through
the streets of Prague when we came across a young man drawing the
buildings around him.
   Although I dread carrying things with me when I travel (and there
was still a traveling ahead), I was taken by one of the drawings and
decided to buy it.
   When I handed him the money I noticed that he was not wearing
gloves, despite the cold weather (it was 5 degrees below zero).
   “Why aren’t you wearing gloves?” I asked.
   “So I can hold the pencil.” And he began to tell me how loved
Prague in the winter, that was the best season to draw the city. He was
so happy with his sale that he decided to do a portrait of my wife
without charging anything.
   While I was waiting for him to finish the drawing, I realized that
something odd had happened: we had chatted for almost five minutes
without being able to speak one another’s language. We made ourselves
understood only by gestures, laughter, facial expressions and the
desire to share something.
   The simple desire to share something had enabled us to enter into
the world of language without words, where everything is always clear
and there is not the slightest risk of being misunderstood.

Someone arrives from Morocco
   Someone arrives from Morocco and tells me a strange story about how certain tribes see original sin.
   Eve was walking through the Garden of Eden when the serpent crawled up to her.
   “Eat this apple,” said the serpent.
   Eve (very well instructed by God) refused.
   “Eat this apple,” insisted the serpent, “because you have to be more beautiful for your man.”
   “I don’t have to,” answered Eve. “Because he’s got no other woman besides me.”
   The serpent laughed:
   “Of course he has.”
   And since Eve did not believe him, he took her to the top of a hill where there was a well.
   “She’s inside this cave. Adam hid her down there.”
   Eve leaned over and saw a beautiful woman reflected in the water
of the well. Right there and then she ate the apple that the serpent
offered her.
   According to this same Moroccan tribe, those who recognize
themselves in the reflection of the well and are no longer afraid of
themselves return to Paradise.

I am in New York
   I am in New York, wake up late for a meeting, and when I go
downstairs I find out that the police have towed away my car. I arrive
late, lunch goes on longer than it should, I rush to the Traffic
Department to pay a fine that is going to cost me a fortune.
   I remember the one-dollar bill that I found on the ground
yesterday and contrive an apparently crazy relationship between that
dollar bill and everything that happened in the morning:
   Maybe I picked up the money before the right person could find it.
   Maybe I removed that dollar from the path of someone who needed it.
   Maybe I interfered with what is written.
   I need to get rid of it. I see a beggar sitting on the sidewalk
and give him the money – I seem to have managed to put things back in
balance.
   “Just a moment,” says the beggar.” “I’m not asking for money, I’m a poet.”
   And he hands me a list of titles for me to pick a poem.
   “The shortest one, because I’m in a hurry.”
   The beggar turns towards me and says:
   “It’s not one of mine, but it’s very beautiful. It goes like this:
“There is one way for you to know whether you have fulfilled your
mission on Earth: if you’re still alive it’s because you haven’t
fulfilled it yet.”

Getting through just one night
   At the age of twelve, Milton Ericksson was a victim of polio. Ten
months after he contracted the disease, he heard a doctor tell his
parents: “your son won’t live through the night.”
   Ericksson heard his mother crying. “Maybe she won’t suffer so much
if I get through tonight,” he thought to himself. And he decided not to
sleep till dawn.
   In the morning he shouted out: “Hey mother! I’m still alive!”
   There was so much joy in the house that from then on he resolved
to resist always one more night in order to postpone his parents’
suffering.
   He died in 1990 at the age of 75, leaving behind a series of
important books on the enormous capacity that man has to overcome his
own limitations.

Restoring the canvas
   In New York I am going to have late-afternoon tea with a rather
unusual artist. She works in a bank on Wall Street, but one day she had
a dream: she had to go to twelve places in the world and in each place
make a painting or a sculpture using material from nature.
   So far she has managed to complete four of these works. She shows
me photos of one of them: an Indian sculpted inside a cave in
California. While she awaits the signs from her dreams, she goes on
working at the bank – in that way she saves up the money to travel and
fulfill her task.
   I ask her why she does this.
   “It’s to keep the world in equilibrium,” she answers. “It may seem
silly, but there is something tenuous that joins us all and we can make
it better or worse according to how we act. We can save or destroy so
much with a simple gesture that at times seems utterly useless. It may
even be that my dreams are a lot of nonsense, but I don’t want to run
the risk of not following them. For me, people are related just like a
huge, fragile spider’s web. I am trying through my work to mend a part
of that web.”

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# 100 On the Complicated Relationships With Others

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

The hundredth name (Sufi tradition)
   A student asked his Sufi master to reveal God’s fifth name.
   “Whoever knows that name is capable of changing History,” he
answered. The master asked him to spend the whole day at the gates of
the city.
   The boy returned the following day.
   “What did you see?” asked the master.
   “An old man tried to enter the city to sell a sheep. The guard
wanted to tax him but the man had no money. So the guard stole his
sheep and chased him off. I thought: if I only knew God’s hidden name I
could change this situation.”
   “You could have prevented this injustice, but you preferred to
stand there dreaming of a revelation. Such stupidity! Well, then, I
shall tell you God’s fifth name: act on behalf of others. That’s the
only way we can change History.”

I don’t mean to offend you (Islamic tradition)
During his pilgrimage to Mecca, a holy man began to feel the
presence of God. In the midst of a trance he knelt down, hid his face
and prayed: “Lord, I ask for only one thing in life: that I be given
the grace of never offending you.”
“I cannot grant you that grace,” answered the Almighty. ‘If you
don’t offend me I shall have no reason to pardon you. If I have no need
to pardon you, soon you will also forget the importance of mercy
towards others. So go on your way with Love and let me grant pardon now
and again so that you don’t forget that virtue as well.”

Pupils and teachers (Sufi tradition)
   Nasrudin - the eternal character of Sufi legends – was standing on
his doorstep when he saw a teacher passing by with his pupils.
   “Where are you off to?” he asked.
   “We’re going to pray that God puts a stop to corruption, for He
always heeds the prayers of children,” answered the teacher.
   “A good education would have put an end to that already. Teach the
youngsters to be more responsible than their parents and uncles.”
   The teacher felt offended: “What an example of lack of faith! The prayers of children can change anything!”
   “God listens to all who pray. If he only listened to the prayers
of children there wouldn’t be a single school in the whole country, for
there is nothing they hate more than their teachers.”

I met a fiddler (Hassidic tradition)
   A disciple approached Rabbi Moshé Haim: “Today I met a man who laughed and scorned my striving for spiritual grace.”
   “Today I met a fiddler,” answered the Rabbi. “He played with such
divine inspiration that all who drew near began to sing and dance. I
followed suit and was praising Creation with my joy when I saw a deaf
man approach us. He stood there watching the fiddler and everyone
dancing away. Finally he said in a loud voice: “What an indecent and
grotesque display by a bunch of madmen!”
   And Moshé Haim concluded: “Those who don’t know how to listen to God’s music can only conclude that it is useless.”

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# 99 Poles & Rules

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Poles and rules

   In
the fall of 2003 I was walking late one night through the center of
Stockholm when I saw a woman walking along using ski poles. My first
reaction was to think of some injury she must have suffered, but then I
noticed she was moving quite fast and with rhythmic movements as if she
were on a patch of snow – except that all that was around us was the
asphalt of paved streets. The obvious conclusion was: “that woman is
crazy, how could she pretend to be skiing in the middle of the city?”
   Back in the hotel, I mentioned the incident to my editor. He said
that I was the crazy one: what I had seen was a sort of exercise called
“Nordic walking”. He explained that besides the movement of the legs,
the arms, shoulders and back muscles are also used to make it a much
more complete exercise.
   When I go for a walk ( which is my favorite pastime, together with
archery), it is to be able to reflect, think, look at all the marvels
around me, and chat with my wife while we are walking along. I found my
editor’s comment interesting, but thought no further of it.
   One day I was in a sports store buying material for my arrows when
I noticed new poles used by mountaineers – made of aluminum, they are
light and can be opened or closed using the same telescopic system as a
tripod for a camera. I remembered the Nordic walking and thought to
myself: why not try it? I bought two pairs, for myself and my wife. We
adjusted the poles to a comfortable height and the next day decided to
try them out.
   What a fantastic discovery! We climbed a mountain, then came back
down, really feeling that the whole body was in movement, the balance
was better, we were less tired. We walked double the distance we
usually cover in an hour. I remembered that I had once tried to explore
a dried-up stream but it was so difficult with all the stones that I
gave up. I thought that with the poles it would be easier, and I was
right.
   My wife got into the Internet and discovered that you burn 46%
more calories than on a normal walk. She grew very enthusiastic and
“Nordic walking” has become part of our daily routine.
   One afternoon, just for distraction, I also decided to get into
the Internet to see what I could find on the subject. I was surprised
to see page after page, with federations, groups, discussions, models
and … rules!
   I don’t know what made me open the page about rules. As I read I
became horrified – I was doing it all wrong! My poles should be
adjusted higher, a certain rhythm had to be followed, a certain angle
of support had to be kept, the shoulder movement was complicated, the
way of using the elbow was all different, everything followed rigid,
technical, precise rules.
   I printed all the pages. The following day – and the others that
followed – I tried to do exactly as the specialists ordered. The walk
began to lose interest, I no longer saw all the wonders around me, I
spoke very little to my wife, I could think of nothing except the
rules. At the end of a week I asked myself: why am I learning all this?
   My objective is not to do gymnastics. I don’t think that the first
people who did their “Nordic walking” had anything in mind apart from
the pleasure of walking, improving their balance and moving the whole
body. We knew intuitively what was the ideal height for the poles, just
as we could intuitively deduce that the closer they were to the body,
the better and easier the movement. But now, because of the rules, I
had stopped concentrating on the things I liked and was more concerned
about losing calories, moving my muscles and using a certain section of
the spine.
   I decided to forget all that I had learned. Now we go out walking
with our two poles, enjoying the world around us and feeling happy at
seeing the body being made to work, being moved and balanced. And if I
want to do gymnastics instead of “meditation in movement”, I’ll look
for a gymnasium. At the moment I am quite content with my relaxed and
instinctive “Nordic walking”, even though I may not be losing 46% more
calories.
   I’ve no idea why human beings have this mania of setting rules to everything.

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#98 Love Traps

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

The Caliph and his wife
   The Arab Caliph sent for his secretary:
   “Lock up my wife in the tower while I’m away,” he ordered.
   “But she loves Your Majesty!”
   “And I love her,” answered the Caliph. “But I respect an old
traditional proverb of ours that says "keep your dog thin and he will
follow you; make him fat and he will bite you."
   The Caliph went off to war and returned six months later. On
arriving, he called for his secretary and asked to see his wife.
   “She has abandoned you,” was the secretary’s answer. “Your Majesty
quoted a beautiful proverb before leaving but forgot another Arab
saying that goes: "If your dog is tied up it will follow anybody that
opens its cage".

Trying to control the soul
   We often think we can control love. And then we catch ourselves
asking the completely useless question: "is it really worth it?"
   Love does not bother itself with that question. Love refuses to be
priced like some piece of merchandise. One of the characters in Bertold
Brecht’s play "The Good Person of Szechuan" tells us about true love:
   "I want to be next to the one I love.
   I don’t care what this will cost me.
   I don’t care whether this will do my life good or bad.
   I don’t care whether this person loves me or not.
   All I want, all I need is to be close to the one I love."

The measure of love
   “I have always wanted to know if I was able to love like you do,” said the disciple of a Hindu master.
   “There is nothing beyond love,” answered the master. “It’s love
that keeps the world going round and the stars hanging in the sky.”
   “I know all that. But how can I know if my love is great enough?”
   “Try to find out if you abandon yourself to love or if you flee
from your emotions. But don’t ask questions like that because love is
neither great nor small. You can’t measure a feeling like you measure a
road: if you act like that you will see only your reflection, like the
moon in a lake, but you won’t be following your path.”

The contemplative quest
   Linda Sabbath took her three sons and decided to go and live on a
small farm in the interior of Canada, where she wanted to dedicate
herself completely to spiritual contemplation.
   In less than a year she fell in love, got married again, studied
the saints’ techniques of meditation, fought for a school for her
children, made friends, make enemies, neglected her teeth, got herself
an abscess, hitchhiked in snowstorms, learned to fix the car, thaw out
frozen pipes, make her alimony stretch out at month’s end, survive on
unemployment money, sleep without indoor heating, laugh for no reason,
cry with despair, build a chapel, make repairs to the house, paint
walls, and give courses on spiritual contemplation.
   “And I eventually realized that a life of prayer does not mean isolation,” she says. “Love is so big it has to be shared.

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