It is not easy everyday to not succumb to easiness and to let the work down (I am not sure of my English, I meant to forget it). So I received your blog as an encouragement. Thank you also for your clarity.

Sometimes, I am discouraged, even if I continue to do the exercise "see through the lie of discouragement", because the same tendency to be content with my small happinness, reinsured comfortably in my usual self beliefs and fears (I know it is crazy!), and the acceptance to suffer unconconsciously, they all come back to the surface again and again. I can summarize it in a simple scientific formula : "as long as I have chocolates from time to time, that can go on like that".

But deeply in me, I know there is another reality, which is accessible for everybody willing to continue the work, patiently, consistently,  humbly. I don't have a full understanding of what the works consists in, but your blogs help me. I try to wake up as often as I can.

Thanks again Doug, and I hope that you could do other video presentations-talks with an attentive attendance, and that more and more people will attend them in an open state of mind.

The Value of Spiritual Work; and, Working with Others:

As I've mentioned to Doug recently, I've been rendered gainfully unemployed and therefore there is no reason why I couldn't take a turn at babysitting my grand kids. So, I have, and I will, Fridays 7am to 4:30 for my hardworking daughter.

Trini, Maddie and Aidan, 7,5 and 3.

There should be a category for baby-sitting under hazardous duty.

For all outward appearances to a disinterested bystander I would seem to be taking the role all in good stride. Judicious, sagacious, practical and with an abiding amiable temperament reaching heights of jolliness. Despite my fierce looks.

Deep, no, not very deep, I was in a boxing ring going on 13 rounds; blindfolded, with 3 zenmasters thrashing me and poking me with bamboo sticks.

It was as if I had gone to the corner of that boxing ring for a breather I retired to washing a few dishes when It was too apparent that I had reactions within me that were too closely akin to a 3-year-olds. It was just that I was all of a 6foot tall 50-year-old;

but it dawned on me right then, that I was so very much able to discern what was immature in me; and what was simply a keen observer. It was what I would describe, my false part, like a brown husk of myself just clinging to the reality within.

I thought how wonderful it would be for them to come back over on Saturday when I would try to remember myself again!

I really liked the 20 minute talk of Guy's on the 26th on "Evolution", and I really tried to absorb as much as I could of his recent talk on "bad fruit" used as fertilizer and burning the seeds.

It also reminded me of his story of the shipwrecked people who were given 30 days by a teacher to learn how to escape. It makes me think that he tells often the same story over and over again only with slightly different forms. He does this, and I hope he always will, because when and perhaps at different stages of a persons journey just the right ones can hit home.

Williams, don't apologize for your English anymore, you crazy French-Canadian, you are a fine fellow!

Oh, and thanks Doug for sending along the message that it's ok to make mistakes!

Sincerest Regards,

Clyde

Dear All

As I read the second sentence of Doug's Blog '...it's not about believing, doing or adding something to my life' I felt a bit confused because I often think that is exactly what I ought to be concerned with, and having just read John Donne's poem LOVE'S GROWTH

I thought these things must be somehow involved:

I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure

               As I had thought it was,

               Because it doth endure

Vicissitude, and season, as the grass ;

Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore

My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow

   With more, not only be no quintessence,

   But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,

And of the sun his active vigour borrow,

Love?s not so pure, and abstract as they use

To say, which have no mistress but their Muse ;

But as all else, being elemented too,

Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,

               Love by the spring is grown ;

               As in the firmament

Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,

Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,

From love's awakened root do bud out now.

If, as in water stirr'd more circles be

   Produced by one, love such additions take,

   Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,

For they are all concentric unto thee ;

And though each spring do add to love new heat,

As princes do in times of action get

New taxes, and remit them not in peace,

No winter shall abate this spring?s increase.

So then, after some time a little perplexed it came to me that I have things back to front again. It isn't me believing, doing and adding but love/God. So when Doug says talks of working on ourselves, for others, for the work itself, this is the part that is within our sphere of abilities. Guy produces a truthful video, Doug tests the waters with it, and like the concentric circles in the poem 6 students are moved by it because they were there to receive. The additions and increase for us comes after work just as the spring blossoms on the bough come after winter. The working body receptive to the spirit is setting the conditions for blooms.

Keep up the good work.