The Project 4 Awesome

One of the worst things about the internet, is anyone can put up anything.  One of the best things about the internet is ANYBODY CAN PUT UP ANYTHING.  This is the case with Project for awesome.  It is not about any one thing.  It is a collection of Youtuber's who make a special attempt, once a year to draw extra attention to causes and charities that make the world a better place.

This past week, I had an absolutely horrible time at work.  Probably the most stressful week of my career.  But, I got through it.  I got through it largely because I was able to keep from completely turning inward and focussing only on myself.  I reach out to help others who needed me and it made me very bouyant in difficult times.

That is basically what project for awesome is about.  We connect with others who care to help others who need it.  John Green of the Vlog Brotehrs put it wonderfully...

"As humans we have a bad habit of imagining that people who live far away from us or in different circumstances from us as fundamentally other. "


Things like P4a and Youtube (when harnessed appropriately) can help us make the connection to that far off strange person that makes them more my brother or sister, and less of a distant other.

Here is my contribution to p4a.  Lord knows I am not an A1 Youtuber, but the hope is that it helps.

The Whirlpool

One of the great challenges I find in this practice is maintaining a ceaseless willingness to encounter and address my own conditioning.  This is coming up a lot lately, largely due to the amount of suffering I am encountering.  It takes many forms:  the death of a friend, the stresses of the holidays, difficult people, etc.  In all of these there is a familiar and seductive layer of conditioning that I am trying to work with.

All encounters involve people with a particular story or agenda.  When that comes to bear in an angry or painful way, it can be difficult to not to get pulled into the story and the drama.  When that happens, being fully present and open to these moments seems impossible. (make the slightest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart).

The reaction might be anger, or gossip, but when the story is spun, we can get caught in the fabric, and make it our own.  From within that fabric, we can see nothing but what we are weaving that moment.  To take in the entire fabric and the environment is to see in context of the whole.  As I develop the ability to realease the conditioned story (to which I may feel VERY entitled too), I believe I am starting to understand what it means to "forget the self".