ALV
I did not quite realise the beauty in God's scheme of things till this thing namely the time gap between the US and India, struck me as one probably devised by Him, so that every morning in India I could get to see a overwhelmingly warm and full-of-import kind of msg which must have been sent by you in your morning time.
I can only hope (a) I have something good to say every day without sounding perfunctory and (b) it does not end up being a mutual-admiration exercise. To that extent, if there is an absence of response, from either one of us, it's not imagined to be an indifference of any kind. I am saying this primarily because, I seem to be looking forward to receiving your reply almost in a childlike fashion, every morning as soon as I get up!!!
" A virtue is just spent, by being made known, from one's own lips" is a quote from one of sanskrit texts. Thus being humble should be the basic fundamental commandment. This is of course a far cry from today's totally consumer led growth being the prescription for development, where marketing oneself is considered de-rigeur!!!!!! Do I have any choice other than being humble, when "knowing myself" led evolution is what drives me?
Your words of wisdom are like "manna" from Heavens. I would look forward to an uninterrupted exchange even if they are brief.
R :
Oh my dear Alv, I am challenged this morning! I am a marketer and what I have to market is myself and my books. How else would they get into the hands of anyone? Perhaps the challenge is to be a humble and integral marketer, but I'm not sure I want to be a poor one for much longer. I used to think there was more virtue in poverty than in wealth, but I don't anymore. Anything can be used for Divine Connection, including wealth, and anything can be used for distraction, including poverty.
If I had money, I could visit India. If I had money, I could send my daughter to a better school and get braces for her teeth. If I had money I could take a yoga retreat and perhaps study with the most enlightened teachers on earth. When my soul is certain that my ego will not use money to ruin me, I suspect I'll be quite rich. I can wait until then; in fact it is my preference.
Now I am eager to know some things about you. There is time for our philosophies as I also would like for us to keep up writing every day, as you say, even if it is brief. I'll tell you a few things about myself. I don't recall what my bio says on the web site so forgive any repetition.
I am 45 years old and have a 10 year old daughter named Ella. I was married for 18 years to a wonderful man, but then fell out of love with him and ended the marriage about 5 years ago. We are happily "separate" and see each other often. He even stayed at my house for a month when he was in transition recently.
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is a place that is very lush and green in the summer and almost unfathomably cold in the winter. Last December and January, nearly every morning the temperature was below zero degrees, sometimes FAR below zero, and many of those days it did not get above zero degrees all day. I don't know if you've traveled to a cold place before, but if you haven't been to the Arctic circle, you probably can't imagine what I'm talking about. It is astonishing to me that a place that can be so completely frozen--ice a meter deep on our lakes!--can not only thaw, but become almost tropical in the summer.
I live in the top two floors of a 100-year-old four story home, which I rent with my daughter, who is with me half the time. The house is nice, but not elegant, simply furnished, lots of stairs inside and out, in a very lovely neighborhood which is an odd mix of rental properties that are not always so well kept up and homes of great distinction and very high cost. I always seem to live squarely between the impoverished and the wealthy.
I haven't traveled much out of the US, besides a trip to Canada when I was 12 or so and 5 days in Paris about 8 years ago. I did a little whirlwind tour of Europe, however, for business a few years ago and spent a day in Istanbul, a day in Oslo and a day driving through Denmark. I don't think the airports in Germany and Holland count, so that is the extent of my travels.
You refer to yourself as "unlettered" but you seem like a very well-read, cultured man. I am poorly read and not so cultured, but I have a letter or two--just a Bachelor's degree in English Education. I taught for 4 years and then did mostly retail sales, acting as a personal shopper for wealthy women in fine stores. It was very fun, but hard work. Truly, it's what damaged my hand over time to where surgery was necessary. I carried hundreds of thousands of pounds of clothes over the years and it just wore out.
I hope you don't mind my foray into the mundane, but I am increasingly curious about you as a person.
ALV
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