Yes it is. And on this website you get to listen to your
listening. This is a website where you have a safe space to
entertain the possibility to yourself, quietly, privately, intimately,
that the way you listen determines how the world
shows up
for you. This is a website where you have a safe space to entertain the
possibility that there's no "is world" out there
with fixed qualities, traits, and characteristics. There's only a world
you listen. And "the" world ie the world you
listen, only has whatever qualities, traits, and characteristics
your listening assigns it.
You could listen "It's never gonna get any better than this" as
absolute pessimism, as a critical defeat, as abject
failure in the experiment called Life. You could also
listen as if it implies the world and all of us in it are headed to a
bad place.
That's one way to listen. It's a valid listening, actually. Even
consider "It's never gonna get any better than this", instead of being
pessimistic, may rather be the height of optimism, given the
pundits' outlook for the future. Its unspoken truth may be closer to
"It's gonna get a lot worse" than to "It's never gonna get
any better than this.".
To accurately follow this theme, to stay true to this line of thinking,
bear in mind it's not "It's gonna get a lot worse before it get's
better!". I didn't say that. "... before it get's
better" is just some tacked on wishful thinking, some
hope which was neither there nor intended (indeed,
arguably it's not even warranted). No, the implication of the
unspoken truth along this particular line of thinking is "It's gonna get
a lot worse.". Period, no end in sight, an obvious codicil to
"It's never gonna get any better than this.".
So where's the place for, where's the appropriateness of,
what's the value to be derived from "It's never gonna get
any better than this" in
Conversations For
Transformation
when one way of listening it's implicit suggestion is we're all going
to hell in a handbucket? Indeed, could there be any other ways of
listening? If so, what are they, and what are their possible
ramifications?
I'm not an atheist, nor am I an agnostic, and nor am I cynical about
God.
In my opinion, however, the
God
conversation, such as people have it, is so fraught with
positionality, righteousness,
interpretation,
unexamined belief, and in the absence of
direct experience.
faith (indeed, to say "blind" faith is more apt), as to
render it not
transformational.
I prefer to offer my view of what creation is via an
experience - in conversation. Creation, as Werner Erhard
suggests, is a matter of distinction. That's a stand of
enormous power which honors Life to the fullest.
But is it "the truth"? Please, please don't make it be, or
try to make it be "the truth" unless you want
to totally obliterate all the value it has. Rather, consider it to be a
place to stand and look. That's how you retain its power.
While I respect and admire and am compassionate toward and sympathetic
to people who praise
God
for, say, delivering them from the hurricane or from the forest fire or
from the flood, my personal idea of
God
ie my opinion (and that's all this is) of
God
is she's more all-encompassing than that. In my quietness I speculate
"It's really awesome
God
delivered you from the hurricane or the forest fire or the flood, but
tell me exactly who you think created the hurricane or the forest fire
or the flood and wrought it on you in the first place?".
So when I assert "It's never gonna get any better than this", I'm
standing on a line in the sand, on one side of which is the world as
it is and as it isn't. It's
as good as it gets,
and it's as good as it will ever be. It's also as bad as it gets, and
it's as bad as it will ever be. If you look to that side of the line,
it's never gonna get any better than this. This is as good as
God
made it. It's also as bad as
God
God made it - and when I say "as bad as
God
made it", there's no value judgement in my assertion. The
hurricane and the forest fire and the flood are all pretty
bad ... until you entertain the possibility they're
God's
creations also. That's when you realize neither
God's
creations nor life necessarily guarantee hospitality. And the fact they
don't guarantee hospitality doesn't make them bad ... they
just are the way they are and they aren't the way they
aren't.
That's what's on that side of the line. On the
other of the line in the sand is nothing,
absolutely nothing. And when I stand on the other side of the
line and come from nothing and look at the world as it
is and as it isn't, here's what I see:
I don't need a reason to give up complaining about the
world. But if I did need a reason, coming to grips with it's never
gonna get any better than this is a great reason to give up
complaining about the world. I don't need a reason to stop expecting
life to make me happy, and instead create happiness out of
nothing. But if I did need a reason, coming to grips with it's
never gonna get any better than this is a great reason to
stop expecting life to make me happy, and instead create happiness
out of nothing. I don't need a reason to give up judging and
evaluating and making people wrong. But if I did need a reason, coming
to grips with it's never gonna get any better than this is
a great reason to give up judging and evaluating and making people
wrong.
All that may be great, but it's really only of secondary interest to me.
What's primarily of interest to me, is this:
Coming to grips with it's never gonna get any better than
this is really a platform, a place to stand from
where I can generate the experience I choose, from where I can declare
who I am
and who I will be and who you can count on me to be, and out of which I
can invent
a future worth living
into.
God
has done the best she can for me. Life has done the best it can for me.
This is the way it turned out, and it's never gonna get any better than
this.