I am a Musician. I love to play my guitar and sing, although I don’t really have the skill to make my passion pay the bills. Before I started a band to play 60’s and 70’s Rock and Roll mixed with blues, I started out playing blue grass and even cut two albums (available on I-tunes and Amazon and wherever music is sold – if you want to help my passion pay the bills!)
 
Through my meditation study, I have found a new favorite song that you all know. I have been listening to it for nearly 70 years and just “GOT IT”
 
The song “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
 
     Row,Row,Row, your boat,
     Gently Down the Stream,
     Merrily,Merrily,Merrily Merrily
     Life is but a Dream.
 
Let’s take a closer look at this song:
 
“Row, row, row, your boat” You don’t row your neighbors’ boat, your spouse’s boat, your kids’ boat, and certainly not your boss’s boat. Row, row, row, YOUR boat.
 
Now, how do you row you boat? “Gently” You aren’t fighting against the entire universe and should use the least effort possible: smooth, mindful, and caring.
 
And which direction should you row? “Down the stream” Don’t go up the stream and against the current. We have all heard the adage
 “go with the flow.” Why struggle and fight our way thru life? There is nothing good that comes out of arguing or trying to make a point.
 
Smile and be happy while rowing your boat. “Merrily, Merrily, Merrily “Merrily Being joyful is sometimes an intentional choice. Be mindful about your face-  you don’t have to practice looking like you’re dead. You’ll do it perfectly someday… when you die.
 
And finally, “Life is but a dream”. Many professionals in the world of quantum physics suggest alternative ideas about what life is really about. Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, wrote; “We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”

Namaste


 

It’s funny when your thoughts during meditation focus in on the act of thinking itself. While thinking about thinking, it occurred to me that thinking (or the lack thereof) is the source of most of our problems. As a society, we have far more knowledge now, than any of our ancestors, yet have a lot less good judgement. We often think too quickly, or about the wrong issues.
 
According to one Google expert, we collect more information in just two days then we as a human race have since the beginning civilization until 2006. Why then, is it nearly impossible to decipher what the ingredients are in the products we eat?
 
We’ve been able to fly to the moon, land, and come back… yet most of the world is hungry.
 
We can communicate at the speed of light, having conversations with people on the other side of the world by talking into our wristwatch… yet we find it challenging to have a face-to-face conversation with family members.
 
Why do we go out to dinner with friends and spend most of the time talking to different people on our phones?
 
We have become a society where quantity seems much more important than quality. The Dalai Lama said it this way: “It’s a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.”
 
We are physically larger than our ancestors, but shorter in character.
 
We have become more interested in long profits, but short relationships.
 
We have more conveniences, but have less time.
 
We have bigger houses, but smaller families.
 
It seems like the more experts we have working to solve the world’s problems, the more problems we have.
 
Maybe it’s time to stop looking outward and start looking inward to find our true essence and discover for ourselves what is important.
 
Gandi said “The world provides enough for all our needs, but not for our greed’s.” It’s time to look at our world, not as a resource but as THE SOURCE.