http://youtu.be/GIGxYQOyYH4
Is it every day that you allow someone else to put something
in your mouth? The answer is no. We are rightly protective of what goes into
our mouth, and who puts it there. Only
the most intimate, trusted, individuals would ever be allowed to do that. Our minds, souls, hearts, spirits are
infinitely more important, are infinitely more who we are than our mouth is. And yet most of us virtually never restrict
anyone from putting something in our nervous systems. People put ads in the paper for us. We look at them. They put billboards, we look at them. They design cars we think are pretty, or
ugly, we look at them. We're listening
to the radio, we listen to the ads, just as they want….
Not so, the insanely humane, Unviolent warriors, the potent
activist throughout history. They select
the best from the world and often every minute of every day, they are selecting
from that best, paying their attention to it, and thereby constructing
themselves out of that.
We are what we eat.
We are what we pay attention to.
You are what you've paid attention to.
I am what I've paid attention to. It's cumulative. There's some undoing, there's some canceling
out that can go on. But essentially,
you and I are sponges, psychologically, spiritually. We are what we assimilate from the
environment. Most of us are cumulatively
of the status quo - what the teachers, the mass advertising, the
corporations... want us to be, because they've placed in the environment that
which they want us to absorb and become. And we go for it. It's not a plot,
they think it's healthy, and so do we by implication, because we go for it, and
never stop to think what’s happening – others, not we, are making us,
constructing us, putting stuff in our, uh, ‘mouths.’ Really?
But not the potent activist throughout history. Whether they articulate it or not, they are
painfully aware that they are not yet what they need to be, and they are
profoundly strategic and responsible as to – what they study, and that they
study only that which they want to become, they attend to only that to which
they want become, and direct their attention away from that which they want not
to be.
And you? If you're an activist of the last 40 years, you've
thrown all that out the window, ‘Oh, I need to be inclusive,’ ‘I need to be
available to whoever wants my attention, whoever wants to talk to me,’ ‘I need to be available, no standards other
than that, I need to be available.’ ‘I
need to be on call, which is to say, other people are going to determine what I
am, what I become, other people are going to, are going to determine how my
time is used, and therefore, what I cumulatively pay my attention to. I am not going to make that decision, they
are.’ ‘No, they are not at liberty to
put anything in my mouth, but as to my nervous system? It's theirs, a blank slate for them to write
on.’
You either let everybody put anything they want your mouth
or stop letting anyone but you decide what's going to go into your mind, your
spirit, your heart, because you will be that.
You are that from yesterday, and your prior life. Invariably the potent activists have
surrounded themselves, have filled themselves to the brim, with the prior great
activists, the prior great religious ideas, the prior great philosophies, and
then of course they build on that, within themselves and their own thoughts,
then they select from and get built into themselves. But they're lifelong creators of themselves,
through a highly selective grabbing what they want to be, and scrupulous
keeping out what they want not to be.
Tough love, friends.
If it's not tough love, it's not true activism, it's not the potent
activist. It's not what the insanely humane
Unviolent warriors do. Because anything
less has no chance of helping those in the greatest need.
Become who you want to be, become what world needs you to
be, by building yourself, incorporating that which you select as the best, and
keeping out of your mind, your nervous system, your attention, your focus...
that which is not the best, because if you don't, that's what you will be, less
than what you need to be, less than what the world needs you to be.
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