At the end of last year I said one sentence to myself: I am ready for new things and new impressions, come on life, I can take the "next level". Since then it started to come like an avalanche, all these changes around me. During all of this I had bigger need than ever to find some peace by reading a good book, listening to good conversations and nice music. I realized, that yes, there is changes what all of us go through some times and there is some which can be actually transformed or diminished by having a different attitude what we think the world expects us to have or what we expect from ourselves based on our previous behavior.
Every day there is a chance that we can be a new person who is in accordance with who we are at that very present moment. We act different, we are different.
An other thing I realized was how important it is to have someone who you can lean to when the changes come. How good it is for people who have someone who educates them, who gives feedback to them while they try to reach certain levels of personal development. In our lives it is usually friends and family, but I am thinking more of a master-student relationship as it was common for many hundreds of years in many cultures. Nowadays there is so many expectations in all levels of life, but we can be happy even if someone is mentoring us professionally for the sake of our professional development, and it is very rare, that we have people supervising our inner evolution as a human being.
I kind of think that good books and music can be an inspirational force when we are in need of certain answers and books and artists find us when we have to find them. Lately I had two big encounters like this: one with Leonard Cohen and the other with The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Leonard Cohen is a poet, musician and a zen master of Jewish origin. Nice mixture isn`t it? I started to listen to his songs and I just discovered more and more of something what I feel and how I see life now. It was a good feeling. I can share my positive experiences about his songs here quickly (even if you do not like his music style, it is worth to read through the lyrics). Here is a quick list about my favorite LC-songs and part of the lyrics that I liked the most:
- In My Secret Life
- Boogie Street
- Hallelujah
- So long Marianne
- Amen
- Come Healing
- Different Sides
"down in the valley the famine goes on
the famine up on the hill
i say that you shouldn`t, you couldn`t, you can`t
you say that you must and you will"
- That Don`t Make it Junk
- Waiting for the Miracle
- Avalanche
"Well I stepped into an avalanche,
It covered up my soul."
- Famous Blue Raincoat
- By the Rivers Dark
"By the rivers dark
where I could not see
who was waiting there
who was hunting me.
And he cut my lip
And he cut my heart.
So I could not drink
From the rivers dark."
- There For You
"I see my life
In full review
It was never me
It was always you
You sent me here
You sent me there
Breaking things
I can`t repair
Making objects
Out of thoughts
Making more
By thinking not
Eating food
Drinking wine
A body that
I thought was mine"
About The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying..Independent of how open people are towards Buddhism and its "worldview", I would make it compulsory to read this book for everyone in, lets say, high school level. When we accept life, we have to accept death too and it does not have to be anything scary. May be the Tibetan Book of the Dead would be too much for our so called Western mind, but this book is quite digestible I think.
These are "my" findings right now. Hopefully you find something good or useful in them too.
Love your writings and your positive attitude that shines through all these! Keep it up!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, I am really glad to hear this :)!
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