I am standing at the window
watching my neighbours -
a kindergarten school
of children playing.
They run, topple, giggle, marvel
and scream at what new things
The other day, at the farmer's market
a little boy tried to pick my pocket.
I grabbed his hand and scolded him.
The man selling vegetables
cursed him into obscurity.
The boy looked sad,
said he needed the money.
Maybe he was taught by adults
that stealing is a better way than begging.
I wished him well.
I support his progress, his journey to self-educate.
Life educates.
I continue to watch the children play.
I read in the Beijing newspaper about Afghanistan.
A neighbour that shares with China a border.
One boundary currently being transformed.
The politics of individual choices
reforms the collective whole,
for the community of well-being.
The perhaps, the maybe, the possibly
of who knows what for sure.
Throughout the history of choices,
the older the culture, the more choices.
Sometimes confusion accompanies
an abundance of choice.
Whose life-rules to live by?
Mine, theirs, ours?
What, when, where, how?
Never ask why.
Rules always begin and end the same,
begin with more rules -
and end in the rules being made to be broken.
Breaking other people's rule,
by following the rules,
means that to follow other people's rule,
is to remake the rules as they evolve into being unruly.
For each individual one of us ...
there is one rule.
One personal truth -
your own Personal Truth -
learned by exercising your own self-leadership.
Invoking your own rule, for and, of your own life.
Your own personal truth
profoundly greets you upon death.
The event of Death makes
life experience more pronounced.
When each one of us is pronounced dead,
your individual personal truth seeks you out -
and your own personal truth always find you.
The truth of your life makes and unmakes you,
then remakes you again, to make you a gain.
Personal truth makes the most of you.
Personal truth is seeded in your Soul.
Personal truth is the growth cycle of your own creation.
When personal truth comes knocking at your door,
your inner-most deeply-hidden secreted-chambers open.
Your unknown greets your known -
what you have made is unmade,
so your unmaking can be remade.
Your truth is your making,
and the unmaking of you is your truth.
Truth, a personal force of creation creatively recreating you.
The sooner you glimpse your Self,
the more immediate you become -
become intimate with your own mortality.
The you become intimate with your own mortality,
the sooner your life, live's journey, transforms.
The breath of your own precious immortality,
is cellularly placed as inhales of Self-awareness -
life's infinite intimate supply of fountain of youth.
Individual awareness is a form of Self-identity.
To be self-aware is to be essentially alive living life.
The last time I journeyed within
China's and Afghanistan's shared places,
I stood at the top of a hill ...
and looked out onto the land.
A land living with choices ...
choices of the individuals who occupy those spaces.
I met an old Shepherd ...
living in the present ...
with one foot still in the past -
one past still kept alive ...
from the results ...
of yesterday’s choices.
The Shepherd and I talked for ages ...
about the choices he is presented with every day ...
the choices he makes each day, one day at a time ...
His present-time world of responsibility.
His rules made by other people's Rule,
his unique rules made and unmade,
which are diverse and different than other people's rules.
Each of us is accountable to our choices -
our choices which show up visibly, immediately,
within the spirit of our manifestations.
The Shepherd is of Afghani culture ...
he often crosses over to both sides ...
the side, of the other side, of the border -
the border between all sides,
the border of the Afghanistan and China -
but The Shepherd does not take sides.
The Shepherd lives on the border of two sides,
and knows the world is round, sideless.
And so the Shepherd lives by his own Nature,
the Shepherd lives by Nature's Rule, without rules.
Nature has no rules, Nature does not rule,
The essence of Nature is to live,
and perpetuate the cycle of life and the living.
The Shepherd lives ...
he carries his integrity within himself -
His graceful inner-movements within make,
and serve to Self-define his outer graces.
His exteriorized grace is a grace of a Self expressed whole,
a Self full of integrity, a Self full of Self-realization.
His Self-recognized spacial-harmonies boundary his Self,
and so his depth-perception is gracefully full of Self-awareness.
To witness a Self full of Self-awareness
is to behold a Self aware, of Nature.
The Shepherd does not need,
nor does he need some person to Rule him,
or someone to tell him what rules to live his life by.
He simply is, Self-aware, and so he lives his life simply.
The Shepherd's family has been living
on this land, in this way,
long before anyone had a memory.
When my friend The Shepherd talks of home and family ...
he laughs a great deal, displaying his big-toothed grin.
He is attractive in his sincerity and humour.
He shares a great deal,
about the nature of the first person,
to ever arrive here in these mountains,
from another world, with another world view.
This first individual,
this someone who came here from somewhere
appeared before there was a clan -
appeared before the clan grew into a tribe of community.
Over the years The Shepherd's community,
along with many other communities,
broke their rules of common unity,
and became willing, yet reluctantly combative.
The community had to unmake then remake their common unity ...
The community, was forced one by one to become unmade.
Each individual had to learn to make peace -
make peace with the new transformative forces of Nature.
Not the man-made forces but Nature's forces.
The Shepherd knows
that no community or individual
can control Nature -
but humans can make peace with Nature.
Making peace with Nature
means living with no rules -
no one Rules, and there are no rules.
Some humans find it difficult to make peace,
to make peace within themselves,
to make peace with Self-awareness,
to make peace with human Nature.
Each one of us has free will
and can choose to make peace with Self and world,
or choose to wage a war on Self-peace.
To be a resistance fighter of conscious evolution is a choice.
The path of least resistance is a journey
of less Self-terror and more Self-peace.
The Shepherd's community of individuals
one by one, each one of them,
chose to become dedicated to preserve humanity,
chose to be creators and protectors of Nature's integrity.
The community chose to marry their beliefs with their actions,
to honour, to have and to hold
a sacred union with Nature.
This peopled community chose
to safeguard humanity's precious sentient resources.
Love is a choice,
individual love,
the love of togetherness ...
the love of the land ...
the love of the planet ...
the love demonstrated in human kindness,
the love of home, the love of family ...
All individuals and communities
eventually must choose
to have love for their community,
and to create a common unity
that chooses to love the one and only planet
we all live on, and we all live off of.
Love for planet is the food and nourishment of a community.
From farming fields and shepherding flocks ...
each individual within The Shepherd's community,
over centuries has become engaged,
and committed to live a life of Self-preservation.
Feeding family health is more important than fighting over ill words.
Nature informs what actions are worth fighting for ...
Nature introduces the forces of seasonal existence ...
Nature teaches how to birth the newborn in Spring,
and bury death in the dead of Winter.
My friend, The Shepherd's community,
lives according to 'Nature's code of the living' ...
"Love the life all around you,
and life all around you will love you."
The Shepherd's community has a common unity ...
"Do not fight life, and life will not be a battleground."
Within each individual, within any internal war,
within each neighbour, within any inner battle,
within each neighbourhood, within any inner struggle,
within each community, within any inner conflict
the challenge is to not fight the extreme external forces,
but the challenge is to go within your Self and make peace -
Self-focus to go within to make peace within your Self.
A season veteran, The Shepherd knows
the only way to safely ride the disruptive cycles,
of long Winters and late Springs,
the only way to have victory,
over heated Summers and bone chilling Autumns,
is to surrender to the common unity of Earthly love,
and to make peace with the terrestrial tendency to struggle.
Shepherds learn to ease off on effort,
and ease off on the controls,
to let go of controlling and to let go of trying.
Who in the entire history of humanity
has ever controlled life's seasons?
How can the uncontrollable in life's cycles be controlled?
My friend, The Shepherd taught me life's basics -
Basically within each individual
there is war, peace and everything in between ...
Basically each one of us
gains independent experience ...
Basically each one of us individuals
gain the ability to visualize each day independently -
recognize the Sheep distinct from the Shepherd,
and define the Shepherd separately from the Sheep.
Each one of us is unique, each to their own
individual personal journey of Self-recognition -
each one getting to know, the 'who I am' ...
Me, I reflect within mySelf, in kind ...
me that I, project out into the world of Others -
I experience the 'who I am' in the 'what I know I own' -
I own my behaviour I personalize, I own my words I use,
I own my actions I choose, I own my compassion I share.
I have my individual opportunity to see my personal growth,
I have my individual potential to share my personal sense of Self.
Each one of us individually experiences the inner resistance,
the sense of Self that senses
and knows the difference
between life's thorns and flowering clarity.
My friend, The Shepherd taught me
How to make personal insight visible,
How to create insight to experience Self-made certainty,
How to make certain my knowledge of my Self, to Self-realize.
The Shepherd leads by example,
He knows who he is, as an individual ...
He knows what he needs to know, to care for himself,
He knows each individual Sheep's need, to care for them.
The Shepherd observes his flock,
witnesses individual sheep,
Knows the feeling of safety and security,
Knows that if the Sheep's individual attention
is drawn away from it's giving-care to it's Self -
then the Sheep's sense of Self must take care ...
take-care to not be distracted from giving-care to it's Self.
Each Shepherd knows if any one Sheep is distracted to fear,
then each and every Sheep might become scared and lost in oblivion.
A flock of Sheep can die from care-taking diversions,
distractions can divert the strength of the flock,
from peaceful-coexistence to individual perils that take life.
The danger of distractions are they take time away
from care-taking time needed
to look after the needs of Self and another.
In the mountains sure-footedness is diminished
if giving-care to yourself is not your first priority -
each Sheep, each Shepherd, each and every need
must first be recognized, made Self-aware,
to safeguard personal safety and survival.
Love of community creates a common unity,
a common bond of shared survival and Self-preservation.
Each Shepherd must care for himself and each Sheep.
Each Sheep must care-give of it's Self, and it's Shepherd.
To ensure survival of the community,
the common unity is love -
in-kind care-giving and giving-care to be kind,
giving-care to love, and care-giving of love.
Love is defined by not taking but giving trust and care -
there is a vast difference between care-giving, and care-taking.
The Sheep engage in training the Shepherd ...
how to be with them individually ...
and how to be with them communally with common unity.
The Shepherd engages with Self-cultivation -
he watches the Sheep to learn and to know ...
how to be with himself, and how to be with the Sheep.
The Shepherd must first know himself to Self-lead,
to be the leader of his common unity,
to be a trusting leader worthy of trust,
and to be a care-giver within his own community.
My friend, The Shepherd witnesses ...
when individuals fight ...
within their home territories ...
changes occur within the flock ...
over time the number increases of individuals fighting ...
and so the fight grows ...
and so the fight grows more influential ...
and so the fight grows more influential over more individuals ...
and so the fight grows more individual influence ...
and so the number increases of individuals fighting ...
and so the fight increases it's power and influence over all individuals.
Each Shepherd knows if he is distracted to fear
and any one Sheep is distracted to fear,
then each and every Sheep become scared and lost in oblivion.
I asked The Shepherd about his children ...
the children living in these areas who see ...
other individuals coming, to live to fight, among them.
Do the children simply see new individual faces ...
new bodies constantly being spirited here,
being spirited there,
being spirited away from here ...
by forces of each individual's own undoing ...
Do the children see each individual,
insisting that the forces which unmake them,
are forces not of their own making?
The Shepherd replies;
"I have trained my eyes,
and my children's eyes,
to view each individual face, each Sheep, as unique -
to view each face and body as easy to see,
to view what is new as easy to make out,
and simple to uniquely define.
I have trained my eyes,
and my children's eyes,
to look for what is simple,
to find the simplicity in what is individually unique,
and to recognize simplicity within the individual,
even over long distances."
The Shepherd observes;
"Humans do not often
view themselves as unique -
some humans do not know their-Self,
some humans do not Self-recognize,
some humans lose their sense of Self -
some humans lose themselves ...
not only within a large flock,
but also among other individuals.
Some humans get lost within their-Self."
Shepherd says;
"Sometimes Sheep are born into a flock
importing anger and waging fights,
anger can lead to a fear
that weakens the individual Sheep,
as well as the flock.
Being ill at ease,
the Sheep hosts disease -
provides an environment for malady to spread,
from one individual to another,
and eventually over time the anger grows
to become a disease of a free will's own unmaking.
"Being ill at ease for long periods of time
will take over free-will, and create ill-will ...
ill-will will affect individual internal well-being.
"Free-will when angered is borne forth,
and carried over distances on a fearsome ill-wind -
wild winds create a storm of change,
and transform well-being into dis-ease carrying fear.
Fear transported transplants into an individual's environment.
Internal environments once contaminated, diminish wellness.
Internal environments which import discomfort export disease,
and soon spread fear to the whole flock's well being"
Each Shepherd knows if he is distracted to fear
and any one Sheep is distracted to fear,
then each and every Sheep become scared and lost in oblivion.
I tell my friend.
The Shepherd and the Sheep.
We are all now in communion,
forming a community, a gathering,
a gathering of like minded souls around us.
I share with my friends.
I come in peace.
I am making peace within my own home.
I am making peace with my own body of experience.
Even though I come from afar
the expression I wear,
within my heart and on my face,
can be viewed and felt as familiar.
Peace.
Peace can be recognized
by one Being to and from another.
Peace shared as a offering
is Peace created as a choice.
A singular compassionate expression.
I wear my individual choices, full of peace.
I carry within myself my right, to peace.
I carry my right to share my self, my peace.
I carry my right to choose, my peace.
I share my Self-expression, of peace,
I share my own individual humanity, as peace.
The Shepherd gazes into the sky.
He views the hills.
He looks into my eyes.
I blush as he smiles.
He says.
"I have heard that birds often carry sticks in their feet.
So when they fly over large bodies of water,
they can float the twig in the oceans of our world.
Birds create their own safe place to sit still.
A bird's wisdom knows to gather their courage
and find their strength within themselves.
Birds know how to create their own peace.
When they are well content within themselves,
Birds continue their journey until they find land.
Birds keep moving until they find a safe place to land -
a safe haven on this Earth to stay still,
