“There is no way to Happiness. Happiness is the way.”
This is my favourite quote from the first morning of the course. The Level 2 is the yellow course- between the blue of the Foundation course and the red of the Advanced course. Feeling is the theme, and happiness is the opportunity of this course, confusion and anxiety are the perils.
The other idea that gave me food for thought on this first morning was a talk about the latest bottle, B106. Pale olive/pale violet. One of the olive associations is bitterness and the pale violet – new to me – was the assocaition with salt. Salt is a vital part of the treatment process for making olives edible. They grow on the tree hard and bitter, salt softens them and releases the bitterness that is in the watery part of the fruit. Of course i am used to associating salt with clear – suffering and the release of suffering.
The question I am left with is what is this salt within that can, if introduced at the right moment, create the alchemy of release. Is salt the light of insight. How to access this salt?
There is a postscript to this
I have this same night seen a programme about Robert Kennedy – Jack Kennedy’s brother. He was almost destroyed by his brothers assassination and yet finally emerged from it reforged, having found himself, his voice, his courage and his purpose. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy was in Indiannopolis and that night quoted to the shocked crowd the words of his favourite poet Aeschyllus
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
Two months later Robert Kennedy was assassinated too. The same words were enscribed on his gravestone. Time and again during the documentary those who knew Robert Kennedy testified to his genuine transformation. He grew to discover his true convictins and the courage to find and live his way, having always supported his elder brother and having grieved so deeply that he knew the truth of Aeschyluss’s words. Salt in his wound. The salt of personal transformation.
