Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 96
July 7, 2009
Is it just me…?
Is it just me or do I detect that things are beginning to shift in the world? I've recently had some wonderful conversations with Dutch film-maker Baptist de Pape , composer Han Kooreneefe and with Lilou Mace. The theme in each case had to do with keeping our minds and our hearts open, and endeavoring to live less from the brain and the ego and more from the spirit.
It's easy to say that - of course - but harder to live it. We have millenia of experience in our DNA that says we should live fro
July 4, 2009
it's that time of year….
I know. It's July 4th and the order of the day is to barbeque things and wave flags. There will be fireworks and fun, and I'll be in the midst of it all, believe me.
Yet….. it would be a really good opportunity to think about what Independence Day might mean, and to take a few of those thoughts with us from 233 years ago. All those years ago the intent was to get free of the rule imposed from outside - King George wanted the colonies to be something they really couldn't be; unquestioning, subs
July 1, 2009
Facebook survey
Just the other day I noticed, yet again, that people have a way of being resentful when others have some sort of mild success. I posted this comment on facebook and was interested to note that many people felt the same way. In fact a LOT of people felt the same way.
So why is it that instead of being happy for someone else's success we find that others tend to want to criticize, belittle, and reduce their achievement? That's not the popular attitude as projected by Hollywood. There if one doe
June 28, 2009
The Best Laid Plans
Today I was determined to be serious and work hard. It made sense; plus I'd had a couple of rather serious conversations over the previous day, about friends who were hurting for various reasons. The weather cooperated by being miserable, drizzling when it wasn't actually raining. Yes, I was going to do some real work.
And somehow happiness kept breaking into my day. Everything from the goldfinch clowning in the springy new shoots of the tree, to the way a neighbor's dog was just so full of lif
June 27, 2009
Sculpture
These two images are of 'Ozymandias', currently on show in the De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, MA - one of the finest modern art museums in this North East Corner of the US. As you can see the sculptures are huge - that's the artist Douglas Kornfeld leaning up against it. Ozymandias? Well, you may recall the poem by Coleridge, in which a traveler comes across a huge fragment of a statue in the desert and this leads him to speculate on the fall of nations, the passing of the arrogance of power,
June 25, 2009
Motorcycle Maintenance
Perhaps this is not the first thing that springs to your mind when you read this blog - so let me explain. A dear friend of mine, a fellow motorcyclist, has spent many years now restoring a splendid vintage bike. It is now close to being perfect - with some discrete modern updates - and one of the plans was to take it on a long road tour.
Last week his back ‘went out’. He’s been diagnosed with various disc ailments - all of which translate into two main categories: (1) painful, and (2) not lik
June 23, 2009
Iran’s lessons
Plenty has been said about Iran, and I can only say that there are many angry blogs offering solutions, and making demands, and calling names.
I won’t be doing that. I’ll observe, though, that the US is now in a strange place. We, in the US, backed Saddam Hussein all those years before we attacked him, and at that time we helped to fund his war against Iran. This was because we still backed the deposed Shah, and so the enemy of our enemy was our friend. Now, that is a realm of strange double-s
June 17, 2009
The Words we use rob us of Peace
The other day I was talking to a neighbor, who is rather well off, and the talk turned to real estate. Before too long I heard her say, “Well, we’re just about keeping or heads above water.” I found this to be an interesting cliche´. And I didn’t believe it to be true. She was not suffering from any real economic threat. So I suggested to her that her word choice was not helping her peace of mind.
This stopped her tirade about the expenses of remodeling her second home.
Yes, I went on. Think
June 16, 2009
How to find Happiness
Happiness, like sadness and anxiety, is very often a learned condition. We learn how to be gloomy from those around us. Yet if we want to we can also train ourselves to see happiness, respond to joy, to experience delight - and it doesn’t take a lot of work, merely practice. Sadness, by contrast, is something we’ve been practicing all our lives, and so we’re much better at it. The daily news delivers gloom and despair by the bucket load, but doesn’t ask us to see much in the way of joy.
We are,
June 15, 2009
How to find peace
I’ve had this experience a number of times now and I felt it might be a good idea to share it, possibly to see if anyone else knew the feeling.
The feeling is like this: I am in a calm, empty sunlit room, and then I become that calm room, and the breeze blows gently, just flapping the curtains. As it does so I know that if I am anything I am the space enclosed by the room, and that the divine is wafting through, as the breeze, bringing energy that for now I get to bask in.
As a kid I used to get t
