8 GROUNDCOVER NEWS THINK ABOUT IT Make peace with yourself Human beings generally struggle with authenticity. We naturally have great respect for those among us who are at ease with themselves and radiate some primordial quality of love and joy with the confidence that we are on the path of awakening. When we feel our survival is at risk, we may relapse into habitual ego patterns of self and other, and thereby lose our own authenticity. This common egocentric division of reality into two parts is the ignorance that creates worlds of suffering and the confusion that follows. Among our ancestors and the teachers that we discover in this life, we will find the teacher who will help us recognize the stage of the path we are in now, and how to mature into a more complete awareness of reality. If you follow Einstein’s advice on the importance of curiosity and imagination, you will experience reality with the embrace of solidarity that surrounds us. Life embraces life. I say this with some confidence after nearly 83 years of stumbling in and out of miracles. As my doubt returns, I make poor choices until pain awakens me and I remember that Love Is The Law. Dion Fortune, a creative writer from the British esoteric spiritual tradition, introduced those words to me. Before macular degeneration hit me, I read widely and often. The challenge of declining vision is tough. It took a year before I went for help from a neighbor and the Groundcover community to open and access a post from my nephew about functional medicine and the work of Dr. George Razakis. I listened to his podcast and believe it is more advanced science than the standard operating model in ophthalmology. When corporations KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 and profits take over the bureaucracies that oversee public health, it appears that health is forsaken for procedures that have become entrenched due to the wealth that is extracted in the patient care mandated by insurance companies and investors. Of course, I am out on a limb as I struggle to bring Kellogg vision care into a collaboration with the functional medicine of Dr. George Razakis. Dr. Ravi Vadlamudi, the wellknown “bicycle doctor” who goes from patient to patient on a bike, is giving me a referral. Will United Health Care recognize that referral? What is my responsibility for my declining vision? My basic dilemma is about writing my memoirs. Will I finish them before I die? Groundcover is helping me write articles with print and keyboard for the visually challenged. I want the same setup to do my memoirs. Of course there is money involved. Will the system pay for functional medicine? Will I be able to find support to get a computer, monitor and keyboard as an expression of unity in the community? In order to finish anything, especially to do it well, love for what you are doing is the main ingredient. Labors of love build unity in the community. That was the intended point of my Labor Power article in the Aug. 22, Groundcover News. Our labor power is awesome, especially when we collaborate with good intentions. How do we benefit all beings without leaving anyone behind? That intention, when practiced with mindful awareness, will bring your own peace of mind to the next step of maturity. The ability to benefit others and share peace in the world grows from this intention. The discipline needed to make peace with yourself is developed by paying attention to what you are doing again and again until it becomes the natural flow we call “in the zone.” In 1967, when I met Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who came from Vietnam to the United States at the invitation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, I was witness to a man at peace with himself who could look at us and the war with great equanimity. His appeal was simple, “Whatever you can do to end the war.” Mix that with Martin Luther King’s "Breaking the Silence,” and I naturally became a draft resister. Eventually the need to resist evil evolved into projects to do something good. The peak of this for me was on The Pastors for Peace caravans to Cuba. The solidarity we expressed was greeted with great passion as the Cuban state and people enthusiastically greeted us as heroes. It is still important to resist evil, and the best resistance is to do something good. I believe that you can start on your cushion and meditate on mindfulness of breath, then mindfulness of mind as a first step to the awareness that allows you to do good. Karuna Buddhist Center comes to mind as a good place to learn mindfulness with the goal to benefit all beings, with not one left behind. Liberation begins and ends with paying attention. Making peace with yourself begins with a natural breath and finds completion in the Clear Light of the Void, the all good expanse of primordial purity (as explained in the Tibetan Book of the Dead). Stillness in motion becomes a lifestyle and the flow becomes your home! As an expression of peace, you encourage others to experience their own authenticity. I look forward to the day when I really practice what I preach and fully embody the spirit-filled life. OCTOBER 3, 2025
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