2013-03-26; 9:20am, Tuesday. Zarathustra’s birthday, would you know! Sunny, clear and cool, but rising to about 6dC. Diary: Zoroaster birthday, singing Sharen, shop stops and webwork. ~~My title says it all, except for Sharen’s song about Robinson Crusoe!~~ My calendar has a second birthday for the Zoroastrian prophet on the 28th this instance! Now there, that shows how important he was and still is, probably at the roots of most religions in Eurasia, because of its fire worship. I said hello to Sharen yesterday aft. She was in pretty good spirits and she even recalled and sang a little jingle. “Where did Robinson Crusoe go with Friday on Saturday night?” Apparently - in the lyrics - these wild men ended up with some wild women. Earlier on I remarked to Sharen that her hair made her look like a wild woman! This may have been a trigger, because we made some fun about that possibility. On the way back I stopped at Staple’s for cell phone information, but they don’s sell them. It is the variety of plans and, with the profits going to the carriers, that makes it a loss to them. I had more luck at London drugs, but they do not have much variety, so I’ll try the internet for a bit. After Staple’s I stopped at Coop for some groceries and a double check on my address. This turned out to be a profitable check and I’ll wait to see the results. Finally, after supper, I vacuumed the kitchen and living areas, complete with some dusting. The rest is next tonight with the floors on Wednesday, all in preparation for Easter. Webwork on the essays for my website progressed to the point that al five (5) are now uploaded in the new format, with the links and images needing some fine tuning. I also discovered why the MS-browser won’t display my talks. It is my using lowercase, where uppercase is expected! Spelling is often the overlooked culprit, when all seems to be in order and ‘should’ work! Writings: Dream awareness, criticism and tolerance examined. ~~Dream feelings spur me on to be less critical of myself and others. I relate this to diversity among people, in society and my friends.~~ It is 9:51am and time to make some coffee; it’s on the way. I awoke with a dream awareness of being kind to my body. In the dream scenario I was being treated for a part left leg replacement that looked very attractive! The resulting feelings at waking up were of being kind to my body in the sense that this would be beneficial to me and serve me well! It is amazing how dreams, at times, get feeling values and some times just straight knowledge, across to the dreamer in meaningful ways. As I realised this outcome while taking a shower, I noted that I can be harsh and disciplinary in attitude towards my body. I force it to perform in other words, in ways that I think it ought to function, like a trainer would force an athlete. Be kind to myself and to my body, and that will have an healing effect, was the end result of this ‘meditation’ on the go. But then, while I was having my breakfast coffees a new, but relating notion surfaced. It relates to my critical attitude, which I now was comparing to my dream’s advice. From there I associated my note from last Sunday’s lecture: ‘Lent, as a letting go of criticism’, but this should really be read as ‘a letting go of my critical attitude’, because it is this attitude that arises every once in a while that needs to be checked. Combining this Lent affirmation with my dream’s notion of being kind, I came up with a being kind to those around me, leading to the following insight. It is, that if I cannot be accepting of the diversity among people in my personal life, how would I expect society as a whole to be tolerant of the diversity in it? By teaching myself to be tolerant of the diversity of people in my own life, from friends to strangers, I learn how it may become possible to achieve this at the level of the community. And, while writing, I realise we don’t have to wait for the personal to have the communal action to take shape, we can work on both at the same time. Learning to be tolerant in my own life translates in being tolerant in the community. I can supplement this by reducing self criticism in parallel to making myself look for excuses why others may be the way they are, while meeting their own challenges. This takes me back about two years, when I wrote an inquiry titled: “Criticism among Friends”. Since then, I have slowly come to see that it is the tolerating of each other’s - often well perceived - shortcomings, that needs to be cultivated as ‘just so’, all the same. Tolerance is the learning to accept what we find on the way, it is not a reshaping it into what we would like it to be. This much must be accepted first and only then, can mutual adaptation and accommodation follow. <10:48am and 11:07am~