As someone who claims to have returned, I sure do a fair bit of hiding.
Sometimes after I write a large post like that last one, my brain needs some re-cooperation time. Heavy subjects can be very draining at times. That post took a bit out of me. Then when you combine it with lots of other brain draining activities that I love to submerse myself in and well... there you have it.
So here I am again, in the midst of the holiday season. Not to talk about the snow on my lawn, or the shopping which I have only just begun. I am here to talk about my tea addiction.
At any given time, my cupboard must be full of tea. It is a requirement. I love having a cup of tea in front of me, Black, Green, White, Oolong, Herbal Infusions... all of them a playful dance, teasing the pallet with its meanderings.
Most flavors I tend to enjoy, quality varies from cup to cup. Sometimes if it is bagged tea, I swear you can taste the bleach that they used to whiten the bag. Yet, it doesn't seem to deter me in a pinch. I do try to accumulate as much loose tea as I can.
I have within this last week stumbled upon a tea that I did not enjoy. Now don't get me wrong. The quality was excellent and the tea was unique. Some might even find it delicious.
It is made by Distinctly Tea and the variety is Lapsang Souchong. It is a Chinese black tea smoked over Chinese pine wood. It sounds interesting... perhaps if I hadn't been brought up on smoked fish I would like it more. I can't help but associate the smell with kippers. My dad had a smokehouse growing up, while I love the smell... it didn't feel like a tea to me. The smoked flavor is very dominant and difficult to transcend. However I must say, the company does have many flavors that I adore. One that I am particularly fond of is an Herbal Tea called Herbs of Woman. It is made with Cinnamon, Apple Bits, Ginger, Juniper Berry and lots of other good things that help keep a female body balanced. I would love to try their Herbs of the Healer and their Herbs for the Healer, also the Herbal Winter Herbs. They have so many teas that sound interesting. No more Lapsang Souchong for me.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Chivalry of the New Day
I am not an extremist, nor do I consider myself to be a feminist. I firmly believe in equal opportunity and I believe that based on the mental imitation toolbox we compiled during our lifetime, different people are geared to do different things. Gender, race, etc... are absolutely irrelevant to a persons capabilities. I believe that there are ideal archetypes and everything falls between those specific polarities. Regardless of your gender you are a mix of masculine and feminine things. With this in mind, we can all equally play the role of knight and the role of the distressed damsel. In each of our lives we are given equal opportunities in each moment for us to play both of those roles and have them breathe life and become a story.
Chivalry... I can't even count how many times growing up I heard "Chivalry is dead" especially with the rise of the feminist movement. My problem with that statement is that it is still primarily based on gender roles. Back in the medieval period men would assume the role of knight. Chivalry's definition was relative to virtue, honor and love. These days we see the knight and the damsel as a reflection of romantically "how the man should treat the woman". We wonder why our heart falters when our knight doesn't rescue us as we wait patiently.
The damsel places expectations on this "knightly man". When he fails to meet up to our expectations... and he will... at some point, we express our disappointment and our hurt. We need to feel loved and honored by them. When we express our disappointment, the knight feels disrespected and dishonored, not to mention judged.. oh and fearful because that they don't live up to our now idealistic knightly expectations.
At this point, how can we expect the knight to shine with courageous honor when we have depleted the good feelings from the good knight?
We fail to see the title of knight as a gender-free model of virtue. Instead we see a world of "male" strength/control/fear and "female" weakness/emotional/love and have placed demands and expectations of each other. All of us are capable of strength and weakness. We are what we choose to be...
"Well the woman can be a knight if she wants to..." we mutter compliantly.
But often we do not alter the rest of the paradigm to reflect that equality, that ONENESS. For those of us that do attempt to alter the rest of the paradigm... we still face opposition for many imposed limitations from society, family and man-made belief systems.
So what happens when we perceive it as a gender-free model of virtue? Acceptance of any surface truth without modifying your inner paradigm is equivalent to tossing a stone into a pond and turning your back on it. It is natural for us to assume that it has rippled but we can argue on both a philosophical and quantum level that because you did not observe it, it did not happen. We assume that it did, but because it wasn't something we perceived, it wasn't recorded. Thus it does not exist in our personal reality even though it exists in the absolute one. So, we acknowledge the truth in the idea but we do not seek the change even though it is in plain sight. Many instead will focus on the chaos of the chaos and impulsiveness of their own actions without realizing that these thoughts and actions form the very world they live in. We may even find temporary joy contained within these actions. It is important to maintain an awareness of the cause and effect relationship between our thoughts and actions. Many people remain frozen in the fear of change... many still are comfortable and fear the temporary discomfort on the path to change. So many of our choices are based on us fearing what might happen instead of loving what will happen. Imagine if we greeted everything with courage and selfless love... like a knight.
Ask yourself, why would you throw a rock and not observe the ripple? So many of our choices reflect just that. Having changed our personal reality with an aimless afternoon of rock throwing/back turning choices, and we have no perceptual awareness of that change, our role in that change or even understand why our arm is sore. You see, when we throw that rock and turn our back on it, we are asking for change... asking for something that we want. When we turn our back on it we resist it... the change has happened but we do not recognize it. Many of our aches and pains and daily stresses occur in such a way. Unless we observe the change, the spiral continues and we seemingly stand still and allow ourselves to become increasingly distressed.
Thus our identity as the damsel in distress who needs her knight in shining armor continues. We find ourselves seeking a knight to rescue us from this cycle of fear that we have placed ourselves in with our choices. In actuality, we can change this story just by focusing on the ripple of change. Eventually we pattern our thoughts and choices on that change. We can choose not to be the damsel, we don't have to be distressed. We can have faith in ourselves.It doesn't mean we won't have moments in life where we don't need to be rescued. But if we seek the knight inside of ourselves we will be more conditioned to deal with each of those moments as they occur. That is where you will find the real romance... we love ourselves. In turn selflessly loving others because we are all from same mix of nuts, each of us as an individual can, filled with a unique scoop of the mixture....
From my perspective... chivalry is not the opening a door for someone. That is simply a kindness. Kindness is a very loving characteristic...
I like to think of us all as knights, giving love unconditionally with noble intentions of the highest virtue. Of course there are monsters within any realm of thought and possibility... but any good knight is highly equipped to contend with these monsters, so long as they are courageous enough to rise above them... OH and if one of us does momentarily fall off the horses back... we are ready and eager to help in kindred service, help our damsel rise.
Namaste!
Chivalry... I can't even count how many times growing up I heard "Chivalry is dead" especially with the rise of the feminist movement. My problem with that statement is that it is still primarily based on gender roles. Back in the medieval period men would assume the role of knight. Chivalry's definition was relative to virtue, honor and love. These days we see the knight and the damsel as a reflection of romantically "how the man should treat the woman". We wonder why our heart falters when our knight doesn't rescue us as we wait patiently.
The damsel places expectations on this "knightly man". When he fails to meet up to our expectations... and he will... at some point, we express our disappointment and our hurt. We need to feel loved and honored by them. When we express our disappointment, the knight feels disrespected and dishonored, not to mention judged.. oh and fearful because that they don't live up to our now idealistic knightly expectations.
At this point, how can we expect the knight to shine with courageous honor when we have depleted the good feelings from the good knight?
We fail to see the title of knight as a gender-free model of virtue. Instead we see a world of "male" strength/control/fear and "female" weakness/emotional/love and have placed demands and expectations of each other. All of us are capable of strength and weakness. We are what we choose to be...
"Well the woman can be a knight if she wants to..." we mutter compliantly.
But often we do not alter the rest of the paradigm to reflect that equality, that ONENESS. For those of us that do attempt to alter the rest of the paradigm... we still face opposition for many imposed limitations from society, family and man-made belief systems.
So what happens when we perceive it as a gender-free model of virtue? Acceptance of any surface truth without modifying your inner paradigm is equivalent to tossing a stone into a pond and turning your back on it. It is natural for us to assume that it has rippled but we can argue on both a philosophical and quantum level that because you did not observe it, it did not happen. We assume that it did, but because it wasn't something we perceived, it wasn't recorded. Thus it does not exist in our personal reality even though it exists in the absolute one. So, we acknowledge the truth in the idea but we do not seek the change even though it is in plain sight. Many instead will focus on the chaos of the chaos and impulsiveness of their own actions without realizing that these thoughts and actions form the very world they live in. We may even find temporary joy contained within these actions. It is important to maintain an awareness of the cause and effect relationship between our thoughts and actions. Many people remain frozen in the fear of change... many still are comfortable and fear the temporary discomfort on the path to change. So many of our choices are based on us fearing what might happen instead of loving what will happen. Imagine if we greeted everything with courage and selfless love... like a knight.
Ask yourself, why would you throw a rock and not observe the ripple? So many of our choices reflect just that. Having changed our personal reality with an aimless afternoon of rock throwing/back turning choices, and we have no perceptual awareness of that change, our role in that change or even understand why our arm is sore. You see, when we throw that rock and turn our back on it, we are asking for change... asking for something that we want. When we turn our back on it we resist it... the change has happened but we do not recognize it. Many of our aches and pains and daily stresses occur in such a way. Unless we observe the change, the spiral continues and we seemingly stand still and allow ourselves to become increasingly distressed.
Thus our identity as the damsel in distress who needs her knight in shining armor continues. We find ourselves seeking a knight to rescue us from this cycle of fear that we have placed ourselves in with our choices. In actuality, we can change this story just by focusing on the ripple of change. Eventually we pattern our thoughts and choices on that change. We can choose not to be the damsel, we don't have to be distressed. We can have faith in ourselves.It doesn't mean we won't have moments in life where we don't need to be rescued. But if we seek the knight inside of ourselves we will be more conditioned to deal with each of those moments as they occur. That is where you will find the real romance... we love ourselves. In turn selflessly loving others because we are all from same mix of nuts, each of us as an individual can, filled with a unique scoop of the mixture....
From my perspective... chivalry is not the opening a door for someone. That is simply a kindness. Kindness is a very loving characteristic...
I like to think of us all as knights, giving love unconditionally with noble intentions of the highest virtue. Of course there are monsters within any realm of thought and possibility... but any good knight is highly equipped to contend with these monsters, so long as they are courageous enough to rise above them... OH and if one of us does momentarily fall off the horses back... we are ready and eager to help in kindred service, help our damsel rise.
Namaste!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)