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apathy
April 2009 
Sending out an SOS
Posted on Feb 26th, 2007
by 
Cre8beauty
Cre8beauty
this is what we call passion. these kids in kilts lead the entire student body into the gym withthe themesong frombraveheart playing before the big game against our rivals.
they didn't do it to put down the other team, but to show pride in our school. and i was proud of them, of the life they carry that oozes from every pore. but not all of them are like this. i wish it weren't so.
and so this is my message to the world. the message that has been bottled up inside my soul all day. i'll roll the scroll and tie it with technology. i send it into a sea of sentient beings, some i've "met" and some i've yet to know. maybe we'll meet on dry land some day, but right now it's of some comfort to know that there are people swimming with me. that i am not entirely alone.
though essentially we are. alone. we come into this world one, however true the transcendental concept of universal soul is. we leave as one. alone. and the moments in between we meet, we live, we bleed, we breathe, we fight, and love and hope. all cost is not lost, and the value is unable to be weighed. but still...what weighs on me at times is this: how do i know my ideas are ever heard? no matter how loud i shout them out. no matter how many bottles stay afloat (when on days like this my heart sinks with the stone of indifference tied to tightly to it's core). no matter how much care i put into building bridges with my words, throwing out rafts to the drowning, i still can't guarantee that i'll complete the dream of making it to the destination i've set out for.
i'm not afraid of failing. but i hate this discouragement. this isn't the pretty picture i'd like to paint. but i'm not the sole creator. how do i eradicate apathy when people don't want to care. when it's cool to guard your emotions, to disregard their existence, to limit the possibilities of your existence for the possibility of peer acceptance? such is the life of a 16 year old. as a "teacher" there's only so much i can do, right? you can't help people who don't want to be helped. but. at the same time, my desire to serve is not quite satiated.
then again, not everyone likes to drown in dreams, ideas, psychology, and philosphy. do i let them splash around in the shallow water, knowing they'll never grow stronger, never learn the strength in swimming through the depths of ideas?
and on a less metaphorical level, in an entirely different class: Are any of you Aristotle admirers out there? Anyone familiar with Book 4, Chapter 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics? He references desert. Does he mean to desert (a verb)? or the desert (noun) as a metaphor for the pairing down of life. The chapter deals with Pride. We are connecting the themes of this chapter to Howard Roark (protagonist of Ayn Rand's
The Fountainhead) I'd love to hear any insights.
it seems i'm not so alone in my dreams so far. so far away from any semblance of similarity to me, however, that it's difficult to see anything but waves of days rolling by in an UNmonotonous sea.
Access: Public
Do you remember a time when you were completely out of a classroom and something occured to you about something a teacher said years later and all the sudden you understood? You said to yourself “oh! Thats what he/she meant!”? lol Happens to me all the time. I think that the important thing is not when they get it, but THAT they get it. And sometimes it takes a while, but its not forgotten…The mind is an amazing thing, and it holds on to things it needs, even when the person is not ready to accept that thing. I have no doubt that you are an amazing teacher. I wish that I could sit in on one of your classes, or be one of your students, because you care…and that is often enough to make a difference. Apathy is one of those things that takes a while to cure-because it stems from the belief that you cant do anything to change anything. You are proving everyday that you have with those fortunate enough to be in your presence that it is not true-you can change those things around you that you dont like. Be patient…often we plant a seed and are not around to see it bare fruit…but it still does bare fruit-and sometimes its the tastiest friut there is….
Keep faith. Your love is felt.
Namaste
Here's to echoing what Stella has already said… Bravo!
I can't help but think there are a couple of other things here at work in the background. First is this idea of “shouting out one's ideas.” Believe me, I get it. Where the feeling comes from, and why it arises. But then I get to thinking about the Yogis who have tried to speak their truth from a quiet ashram, and how somehow, eons later we still hear their messages. Or what about Christ and his sermon on the mound? Why didn't he shout it from the top of his lungs?
I get to thinking about my voice as an artist and a filmmaker. If I made a few of the same choices that filmmakers like George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg had made, would my perspective get heard with any deeper significance?
That's when I get to start thinking about two things… Rather than focusing on volume, and hoping that people will hear, I tend to focus on the quality of the message and my confidence in it. I remember one teacher I had in college who, in a classroom of nearly 50 students he always spoke about two notches above a whisper. Why? Was he unclear about the surety of his message or the veracity of his facts?
Nope. In fact, he knew that by causing his students to focus on the physical act of listening, that the deeper act of assimilating facts and ideas would follow automatically. Perhaps the stronger voice is in fact the quieter one.
By what I have witnessed in you from your little spot here at Zaadz, I have no doubt of the quality of what it is that you offer to your students. At the place that you are working from, you have to know deep down inside that what you are laying down is foundation. How quickly do you expect to see the result of the work that you are doing? The odds are that in most of your students, you won't realize the quality of work you are doing until your students have had a chance to build their own houses upon the foundations you have helped to lay.
How you can really come to better understand the beauty of what you are doing isn't in looking for the evidence outside of yourself, but looking for faith within.
When I think about the teachers who gave me the most and touched me the deepest, I don't sit around thinking about the facts that they taught me, I get to think about the ways they helped me to be.
I remember one of the most significant teachers that I ever encountered in school. I can't remember his name. He should have been a blip on the screen of my scholastic career, but he wasn't. He was a summer school teacher for English. He was the first teacher who told me… “Write whatever you want to” and then, he sat down and regarded with the significance that taught me that my writing was important. What I got from that, gave me confidence to write, grow and express myself. And for that I am eternally grateful. I wish I could remember his name…
Learn to find the faith in your own voice that so many of us already have.
Namaste,
–D.
when i say “shout”-i mean more of a soulful shout. i’m not now, and have never really been a yeller. funny though, because another student in the class suggested that i try yelling. maybe my quiet approach is making an impact, but in this day and age mtv has a louder voice than me.
my soul shouts, but my voice is silent. mass media has little to say, but it’s a much more catching tune. an infection really (but maybe it’s my perception that is skewed). these kids think gandhi is boring. i guess that’s probably the case at most high schools. but i also know that we have very few student’s whose parents have any post high school education, most work on the rigs and make more money than me, but still many live without much money at all– about half are on free and reduced lunch, racial tension is think enough to cut with a knife or crush bone (a girl got her face kicked in friday), and parents who, when i call to tell them how their kid is doing, actually say: “why the ______ should i care?”
my response is only more love. and love is loud without words. but in a world where prattle makes the heaviest impression…it’s sometimes hard to not doubt, or at the very least question if i am even heard.
but here, i know there are people who listen. and sometimes that’s a life saver for me. so, thank you.
there is only the one nondual mind
but to the degree that we have not experienced the outside and inside
as 2 aspects of the same fundamental reality
then “nonduality” is simply another dualisitic concept
…then we find ourselves seeing and living
in this familiar, practical everyday world
where we struggle with trying to attain awareness
and those with some amount of awareness
also strive to help others to attain awareness
In this practical, samsaric world
the gap between a mind that is aware
and a mind that is not
is indeed very large
awareness is the path less trodden
and ignorance is the well beaten one
when the light of the nondual mind
surfaces naturally and intuitively within you
it wells up and bodhicitta manifests on its own volition
it is the spark that energizes your illusory body and mind into action
in a tireless effort to help others
to share your own loving kindness
so that it may reawaken that quality in others
Selfless love
is the natural expression
of the primordially pure mind within you
clamouring to get out
to expose itself
to itself
to see its own nature
with its own eyes
That loving kindness that flows effortlessly from you
and finds creative expression to connect with all other living beings
is nondual mind's natural propensity
to awaken
For the more connection we have with all other living beings
the less power we will give to our own dualistic notions
of enemies, strangers and friends
If you recognize that this is the source that's really driving you
then your actions in the world will be that of a yogini
a bodhisattva whose actions are pure
inspired directly from the source
and your bliss will not be dependent on what others feel, think or act
When you act with confidence in your own buddha-nature
that confidence cannot help but transform others
because, in the end
we are all asleep
and we are all trying to awaken and find our way home
we will all naturally follow those that we detect
are confident about the direction they are moving towards
On the other hand
your own lack of confidence
in the extradordinary nature
of your ordinary life
will betray you
as you will try to achieve something
which you already have
An old yogi once told me
when you act with genuine compassion
there is no choice involved
….what choice does the raindrop have except to fall?
….or the river to flow? ….or the wind to blow?
everything acts in nature according to its own intrinsic nature.
Human beings are special in that we also have an intrinsic nature
but we have the ability to interject every situation with a quality called “doubt”
…but even doubt itself
has an intrinsic nature
it too arises purely
Finding that new quality of confidence within oneself
you will not need external measures to know
whether you are succeeding or not
You are succeeding by simply connecting with the source within you
and allowing your being to be a conduit for it
to depend on external reality for validation
you may be setting yourself up for failure
because ignorance propogates with much less resistance
than awareness does
how long does it take human beings to learn simple lessons?
how often do we make the same mistakes time and time again?
for the creative force welling up from you
to unleash the creative force stuck in others
you have to take a creative pathway
to unleashing within yourself
you have to think nonlinearly
off the beaten path
it is up to your own awareness
to find the best way to unleash your creativity
sometimes we are stuck
and the path we've been on
doesn't really work for us
it's up to us to recognize that
and let that awareness guide us
to a path that is more in tune to our own creative potential
that is the journey each of us must take
as we meander through this experience of life
but by sharing yourself with the universe
the universe reaches back to you
in symbolic (like here)
and nonsymbolic ways
in closing, I can only come full circle and say
we are all just one (and beyond)
BFJG
O BeautyCre8or…
Know that I have no doubt that it is from your soul that you shout, and not from your mouth!
For some reason all of this conversation of passion, souls and voices brought this lyric to mind…
Skin of the Drum - Lyrics by Michael Franti
I was born botanical
the soul of an animal
deep beneath the layers, I sink my roots
no need for mechanical
I come strictly organical
when I need to feast, I look to the East
that's why I'm never scared of the beast
even though they try to prey upon me
I'm protected by the one always greater than me
so now I reveal to thee
because you wanna see
the contour of my mystery
the strength of my arches
the colour of my conscience
and the way that I process my diction
some fact some diction some mystery
some future fantasy
I'm the trunk that holds the branches
the leaves who do the dances
my flowers romantic
my love gigantic
from Africa, transplanted translantic
in the heat of the sun
I bring shade for everyone
like the beat on the one
I'm the skin on the drum
(chorus)
I keep on living with the fullness of the one
like the heat of the sun or the skin on the drum
I'm fully marinated and now I'm ready for the fire
so you can fire one
fire one
fire two
See I've been fully marinated
and now I'm ready for the fire
see I'm beginning to perspire
from deep within to the skin
yo, the feminine and the masculine
the pieces of the puzzle
see my reflections in the puddle
after the storm the purple of the sky
brings to mind another time
when we resided
below the water line
life was fine there human divine
but in the years following
evil men came swallowing
everything in sight
some learned to run, some stayed to fight
I kneeled at the tomb of the soldier
said I would love to behold her
the magic in store there
she touched me on the shoulder
she said, “in time all is revealed, box of light be unsealed
now listen to me son, be like the skin on the drum”
(chorus)
And as the pepper gas clears
Dunno why, it just came to my mind…and police and protestors go home
just as the morning dew are tear drops of the night
my emotions are always there for you
and will never leave you dry
bless
Bless.
–D.
How are you feeling today? The day after your blog which vibrated with your frustration. I hope again in peace…
If I may say, you can help people who don't want to be helped. By not taking the responsability unto you if they don't want to listen … and at the meantime to keep the message repeater on… One day the message might stick and grow.
You plant seeds but it needs more then just seeds, it needs a firtile soil, water… Sometimes for someone you maybe the planter of the seeds, on other moments you might be the fertiliser on other the water. But all need to be present to make something grow.
It might be frustrating not to see immediate results but know that with every word, suggestion or a smile you are part of creation.
Be good to you
Tom