Posted by trouble on March 25, 2002, at 11:37:18
Good morning friends,
Today marks a profound beginning for me, I am embarking upon a new and edifying Spiritual Practice, and the first person who stands in my way will live to regret it.
Let me quote from the book I spent this weeks' lunch money on, howzat for starting off a spiritual discipline on the right foot? Ahhhh deprivation, thy name is... er, deprivation.
To wit:
"...What is civility? What does it mean to be civil today, at the beginning of the 21st century? Is civility in decline? How do we make it part of who we are? What are civility's basic rules? How does civility improve the quality of our lives? How do we praciice it among friends, in the workplace, and among strangers? Does it have drawbacks? Are we supposed to ALWAYS be civil? How do we deal w/ the uncivil?
"...I wouldn't want to be considered uncivil for presuming to teach civility. The message here is not that I am a flawlessly civil person but that civility is a wonderfully effective tool to enhance the quality of our lives.
"Cicero voiced the concern that his readers might see a conflict btwn his lofty teachings and his less-than-perfect-conduct. His reply was that he was writing about virtue, not about himself, and that when he condemned vices he first of all condemned his own."...M. Scott Peck chose to open his wise guidebook to smart, decent and loving living w/an utterly plain and simple statement. 'Life is difficult' is the founding truth of his work, and he connects to 'Life is suffering,' the first of the Four Noble Truths taught by Buddha.
"'...Life is difficult.' I like the simplicity of the utterance. We can all benefit from basic truths stated in direct and simple language. In the hasty confusion of our days, we easily lose sight of basic truths. As we fail to make them part of our everyday thinking, we eventually become unable to recognize them clearly and confront them effectively. And so we stumble through life in a cloud of dust raised by our own misguided steps.
"When we manage to make real contact w/ a basic truth, sometimes we are inspired to act upon it, and thus we may change our lives radically and permanently. Greatness is not just in the truth itself but in what we can do w/it. 'Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult,' says M. Scott Peck. Now, we may be able to reach this wisdom and strength or we may not. All of us, however, can find ways to cope effectively with difficulty..."
More to come, if this ain't too halo-corny-n-highfalutin' for the cretins among us.
love,
trouble
Choosing Civility
The 25 rules of Considerate Conduct
P.M. Forni
Cofounder of the John Hopkins Civility Project
(St. Martin's Press, copyright 2002)
poster:trouble
thread:20847
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020325/msgs/20847.html