Beautifully Broken Issue #14: Timing, Fear & Peace
Beautifully Broken Issue #14: Timing, Fear & Peace
IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR YOUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD
Happy Saturday! Welcome to the new, compact format of Beautifully Broken.
Because we’re in a busy, confusing world with a sea of content competing for our eyeballs, we've switched from a more traditional magazine format and offer an easy to read, condensed version of the ideas at the heart of the publication. Each Saturday I’ll deliver this easy-to-read new format of Beautifully Broken and hope that it will meet with readers’ approval:
One idea from me
A piece of art to meditate upon
A short piece of dream fiction
Some wisdom from the writings of others
As I've started Into The Labyrinth, a fiction story in instalments, I'll continue publishing that separately to subscribers until it's finished.
So, without further ado here are some art, ideas and wisdom to consider this week… :)
IDEAS FROM ME: Shizhong (Timing, Fear & Peace)
How do we know we are right? Our ideas, our sense of right and wrong is bracketed by our experience, our education, our tribal customs and thinking.
Morality in one cultural, national, environmental context might be completely opposite in a different context.
Generally, if something runs contrary to our pre-conceived notions of how things should be, we feel agitated, threatened and an animal flight or fight instinct begins to activate.
This might be the correct response given the situation and lead to a positive long-term outcome, or it might be the correct response only in that instant but spell disaster later or it might just be the wrong thing all together, even if it felt right at the time. Who can say if any action is correct without the benefit of hindsight? The ancient Chinese sage Confucius has a suggestion:
His idea of shizhong (pronounced sher-jong) refers to the right action, in the right way with the right timing. Lining up all three of those conditions is difficult but if we can maintain a relaxed and sensitive then we have a chance. Keeping the mind in a soft, listening state will improve our chances of survival, increase harmony in relationships and heal the world. If we give in to fear and desire then the chance for finding shizhong is lost.
Listen, consider, feel, think, don’t react until you've judged if how you will behave is the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
There’s almost always time to reflect before action and when there’s not, the practice you do beforehand will hold you in good stead when you have to instantly choose the right path when the pressure is on.
HEADLINE FICTION: The Jungle's Deep Heart
Here's a new format for short fiction that I've invented. It's a 70-word story in three panels with a pattern of 7-16-47 words, where the first 7 words form a headline style title, the 16 serve to fill out the headline information a little more and the final 47 contain the meat of the story and resolution. I think I'll call it "headline fiction". These micro stories of mine are based on dreams (and nightmares!) :)
ART TO MEDITATE UPON
Figure portant une tête ailée (La chute d'Icare) - Figure bearing a winged head (The fall of Icarus), c. 1876, Odilon Redon.
Suggestions: Ask what this art has to do with the story of the fall of Icarus. Why is Redon depicting the scene this way? Why is there a giant winged head held by a body with a giant sun in the background? An illustration worth consideration!
WISDOM OF OTHERS: Excerpt from Beyond Violence by Jiddhu Krishnamurti.
“So in understanding the truth about fear, you also understand the truth about pleasure. To want only pleasure and have no fear is an impossible demand. Whereas if you understood both, you would have quite a different appreciation, a different understanding of them. Which means that we have to learn about the structure and the nature of fear as well as of pleasure. You cannot be free of one and hold on to the other. So what is fear and what is pleasure? As you can observe in yourself, you want to get rid of fear. All life is an escape from fear. Your gods, your churches, your moralities are based on fear, and to understand that you have to understand how this fear comes about. You have done something in the past and you do not want another to find out; that is one form of fear. You are afraid of the future because you have no job, or you are frightened of something else. So you are afraid of the past, and you are afraid of the future. Fear comes when thought looks back to things that have happened in the past, or to events that may happen in the future. Thought is responsible for this. You have very carefully avoided—especially in America—thinking about death; but it is always there. You do not want to think about it, because the moment you do, you are afraid.”
Live the coming week with an impeccable sense of fearlessness and timing,