"Bless These, Our Circumstances." -- Nancy Wood
Like many important words, the Navaho term hizhro (hozro),is not quite translatble into other languages. It sort of means "balance," or "harmony." or "beauty." or "aseptance." As "accertane." hozhro suggests accptance of circumstances at a most profound level. A Navajp might say: The Hopi think thet know hiw to live with drought, hah, we know how to live with drought. The Navajp have no ceremony intended to produce rain; they pray for acceptance. Ideally, harmony is always an inside job, we adjust to circumstances, not the other way around.
Occasionally i read a twelve step story in which the level of acceptance seems extreme: "Dotor, Alcoholic, Addict" (Pages 439-451 in Alcohollics Anonymoux.1974 ed.). He saus on p.449: "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because i find some persom, place, thing or situatiom unaccptable tp me, and i can find no serenity until until I accept that person, place. thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. .... I could not stay sober unless I could accept life completely on life's terms..."
Yes, there is also the suggestion that we need "courage to change the things we can and wisom to know the difference (between what we can and cannot change). But the above quote makes it clear that acceptance (hozro) is basic.
Over at leAst the last 15 or 16 milennia, we have become so accustomed to seeing the illusion as the reality. that our feeble Attems to recapture A bit of the reality fallll flat. It seems we don't know what is real and we have lost the Ancient wisdom that served us well in living with our ignorance Good luck to us as all in trying to some of it back.
During the past month,i hve been ill with the flu. I have had empitnee, silence, low or no energy, and a strange sense of unreakut (which niggt be glimmerings of reality) My perception of time, self, soace, and reality have shifted bak and forth with startling suddenness. At the same time i have been reading a lot of ficturn set on the Navajo reservation. I've been reading some Blake, oartucykarkt "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." In this latter "book" i find the line:"If the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see things as they are -- infinite."
In one of his "memorable fantasies" an angel takes Blake on a tour of hell which is poirtraud as rather Danteish.. But when the angel "flees" and Blake is left alone. that image of hell vanishes and Blake firds himself sitting serenely on the banik of a moonlit river. Then Blake shows the angel a vision of heaven as an insane monkey house.
The angel accuses Blake of "imposing" on him. Blake answers, yeah, let's nit imoise on one another.