Carl’s Nutshells
Bozebits
The purest form of love is not an exchange. It requires nothing to give it and nothing to receive it. Love is the core of our being, and it is endless. When you have loved all, regardless of their doing, you know love.
Carl’s Nutshells
Bozebits
Loving “you” is the best of you. No one does “you” better than you, so why would you relinquish “you” to the dream of being a better you? Or worse, being someone else. There are no failures in life. Even when you are fixated on being something other than “you.”
Bozebits
Happiness requires no self to be. That is, no self that feeds on things it believes cause happiness. Love and joy are the same. All these things defy cause and effect. There is no cause for love, joy, or happiness. They just are.
YOU the CREATOR- The Unchangeable Change
What we like to call change, for most of us, is really an adding of layers to the onion rather than removing them. We tell ourselves “let me do this, accomplish that or go here instead of where I am, and everything will be better.” It won’t; please get that!
Most of us are full of layers that are little more than avoidance of real-life experiences we find ourselves in. We believe that we can change our circumstances simply by running from them and that, somehow, will unravel us but really it just winds us up even tighter.
What you don’t experience fully becomes the nature of your experience even when you think you have changed. What you don’t take care of now becomes a layer; a full-length overcoat that is heavy and burdensome!
Get good with where you are; be honest with it and never let yourself be fooled into believing you are not its creator. You can run from creation, but you can never run from yourself, e.g., “the Creator.” Live where you are because “where you are” is the only place life exists.
Carl
Monsters
Counter the ugliness you see in the world with your beauty. Not more ugliness!
Recently I placed a post on Facebook that I regularly do daily and have been doing for several years now. I receive many comments and always try to engage with those who take the time to respond or comment but on occasion, feedback is given or questions asked that I feel need to be shared with a broader audience. Not only for clarity’s sake but because of a connection to world events and affairs that we humans take extremely serious is being questioned in light of the message I share in my posts. This is one such response and my response in return. I’ve changed the names to protect privacy but extend my appreciation to this responder for speaking what many are thinking but are perhaps too inhibited from expressing!
Here is the original post: “Give way to the mystery that is the foundation of your experience. Embrace love instead, and whatever unfolds, it will carry you through. Lighten the load of all that you feel you must shoulder, especially the burdens of heavy thoughts and resentments. The less you have to think about the less you have to fear.
Ease, always, into life with your wits, kindness, and smile. Life will smile back. Incredible day, Carl”
I received many responses to the post but one seemed particularly heartfelt about the near impossibility of living in such a way amid her view of what’s wrong politically in our country (USA). Particularly with our President, Donald Trump. Here is her (I’m calling her Marie) response:
“Carl, I know this to be true…tell me how to get thru all these heart heavy feelings of hate and anger towards our resident WhiteHouse monster? It’s killing my hope.”
I will make a disclaimer before sharing my response with Marie that I tend to be very direct and to the point when responding to these kinds of questions and may appear to be blunt and insensitive but I want to make the point clear that few if anything we point to at the outside world is ever a reason for us to have our, as Marie states, “hope” being killed. I will say that most who bear the brunt of my responses are good-natured about it and take it in good stride and I appreciate it. I, in no way, am trying to embarrass or offend but I do want it clear that certain things will get a lot of emphasis in my responses and almost all of those are related to the ego nature that is, very simply, “I am right and you are wrong, and that my joy, peace and happiness is a product of your rightness not being the same as my rightness, making you wrong and me right, but, miserable.”
Here is my response:
“Our resident WhiteHouse monster? You’re making stuff up, Marie, which is what our minds do and it is done under the guise that what you think someone else thinks is actually important. In response to your question, first and foremost, the “resident WhiteHouse monster” doesn’t exist, and more, to the point, “it” [your WhiteHouse Monster] has not done anything to me [or you] that prevents me [or you] from living fully and loving completely! Even those [others] we label “monsters!
Don’t look for things to get upset about because that is all you will ever find. Ego makes stuff up. Disengage your ego from what you think is going on that “kills your hope,” and all that is left is the love YOU are. It’s hard, I know but just like you mention, “I know this to be true” there’s nothing to “get through” except the nightmare you create in your own mind. Stop listening to others who tell you there are monsters about and that you need to feel anger and hatred and sadness and all the other BS they want to you to accept! You know, there are no monsters! We all do.
I literally love everyone, Marie and I don’t label anyone. Labeling carries a guide, a program as to how you should feel when you do label. I’m so, sorry for this scold, Marie. You and one other has commented in such a way that tells me that you are heavy into contemplation about “how [do] we love what we hate.” It’s tough and I don’t have a pat answer. I just don’t make stuff up! I look at my experience and never judge it! I just live it and it always comes through with wonder, amazement and unspeakable joy. I live without hope and I live without beliefs because both are “made up.” What is, is where it’s at and I do not cloud it with the unreal and if you’re “hearing it” it’s unreal. I love you dear one. I want you to always know that. You, and you alone, own your hate. Try loving it into non-existence! Heart hugs!”
I will conclude with one little add. Far too, many in the spiritual genre, consider their politics, whatever they may be, to be “spiritual” and take great pleasure in reminding those of “other” points of view their, so-called “spiritual” nobility. They could not be more misguided and I will add that this applies as well to religious beliefs, education, and class. Nothing is more egoic and insidious and completely unenlightened. The collective ego is always less than the sum of its lowest parts. It is the lowest form of human affiliation and it doesn’t matter what or who you affiliate with. Be careful. Love is without right or wrong and it is the only solution to nonexistent “monsters,” egos, (yours, mine, everyone’s) create. As my original Facebook post says” Ease, always, into life with your wits, kindness, and smile. Life will smile back. Incredible day, Carl.”
My Father Al; A Living Tribute
It may seem a bit odd to pay tribute to another human in the form of an obituary but what good are expressions about someone if they, for whom they are written, are unable to hear and know the depth of feeling a Son can have for his Father.
My Father Al came into my life after I had ruled out all adult humans as trustworthy and protective of those they were charged with caring for. My real father had left without having any contact and my life as I knew it then was forever over. I never even gave my Father Al a chance to be a friend let alone a father to whom I would look up to. He was just another Man, human if you will, who like so many others would find ways to hurt, abandon and abuse me and make my life a hell that would haunt me endlessly. I kept him at a distance but I never stopped observing his quiet, steady ways. Beyond that I never gave him much thought. He was not much more than an inconvenient intruder in my own already defective life.
As I grew older, I began to take upon myself, with great pride, the idea that having lost my biological father, I could pick and choose the men who passed through my life and take from them characteristics I admired and wanted to emulate. I prided myself on the great variety of virtues I was able to draw upon as well as the men from whom I would draw them. I threw my admiration at certain men from many walks of life and eagerly observed and adopted characteristics I felt were necessary to my own character building. Things like integrity, honesty, hard work, devotion to family, self-sacrifice, humor and love of life. As I sought these things, always, Al was in the background.
One rarely knows the “hows” of our experiences. Most of us come to a place in our lives where our own retrospection looks back on “what changed” or on “what just happened” and in silence we marvel at what we missed for so long. For me, like John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim” I travelled a long and desperate road only to circle around back to where I had started. In a moment of stark recognition I had made my way back to my original home and to that place where in my youth I had judged so harshly. The journey took me in countless directions and all that I ever sought was always right there where I had begun. The greatest of all men was there in my own backyard. He had not changed but I had. I now had eyes that could see that where I began, and where I had ended was at his feet. And in a silent moment of recognition, at one so great, I am humbled in his presence.
The light has never shined so bright as when I have been with him. My Father Al was everything I ever sought and even with the passage of time being so long before my own recognition I feel as though I have never “not” known. This is because of Him, as well. In all my travels he has never judged. He has loved as only a father could and I have felt that love and it is inexpressible. What was once the “least” to me, is the greatest!
My Father Al has gone home to a place we all know and from whence we have all come. He is with his “greatest of all possessions,” as he referred to my Mother, whom he adored every moment of his life. Another great quality of the man! We are forever drawn to the place he now enjoys but more importantly we are drawn to him. Like a fortress or a stand of trees or the inexorable pull of the moon upon the waters he will always be the force that draws us ever closer to eternity. The light in a dark place, never looking back but always looking forward. He is our guide, a sentinel, not guarding the way but protecting us along the way.
My Father holds many places in our hearts. To some he is “Al,” while to others he is “Dad,” while to some he is “Brother Yates” or “Grandpa” or just “Yates.” Some even know him as “Handsome.” Whatever the name we knew him as or the description of him we hold we are all united in our love for him and he always reciprocated by loving us. Not in grand and showy ways but quietly, completely and most of all purely.
Rest well my Father and know that in this place we celebrate the life of one so good we are all humbled to have been a part of the vast universe you created. Go in peace and know that we all love you.
I love you. God bless you my sweet Dad.
Your Son,
Carl