Thursday, August 20, 2009

Rainbow Rising from a Stream & Intro to Fushigi: Begun 2009.08.13

I have recently begun to watch The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. He has inspired me to look into the parallels I see between his philosophy of life and the spiritual/philosophical texts I enjoy reading. And while I found myself immediately thinking of Jung and Sheldon Kopp, the book I first picked up to begin my research is

ISBN 0-688-11967-0

Began 2009.08.15

It seems to me that Reynolds may be relatively unknown, as I have never seen or heard him in our broadcast media. I stumbled across him in the time of independent book stores, and found his ideas to be the most commonsensical and immediately/experientially 'true.'
Reynolds keeps it real, and is easily the most direct advocate of living in the moment, which is one of Cesar's most repeated tenets in good dog behaviour. He argues that this is one of the most important attributes of owning a dog, that you need to be living in the here and now because they are absolutely immediate -- they live neither in the past nor the future and to relate to them healthily requires that immediacy. But isn't that immediacy, of being fully alive now, truly what is important to live the well-lived-life?

Anyway, the book is festooned with noted stickies, right now, as I begin the process of researching the parallels between 'The Dog Whisper' and great philosophical tracts.

I learned a great Japanese word, today, from the book.
"Fushigi."
This translates, per Reynolds, as 'marvelous' or 'wondrous'.
It is applied to the magical moments of synchronicity-petites, as I call them. Synchronicity-petites are the small confluences of life, which when attended to experientially refute the universe as being dead collection of dead matter. This term equates, roughly, to Cesar Millan's use of the term 'the ripple effect', in that events come together meaningfully to those open to them.

The examples Reynolds give are his having purchased as a gift a hair drier for a friend whose hair dryer broke that morning. I find this word most excellent because I keep a black book log of the fushigi events that I find barrage my experience of life, oft-times in ways that, while marvelous, are also distressing to some more or less extent.

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