Mr. Rogers and How He Helped Your Spirituality

[Earl Grey]

Let's consider this a Mr. Rogers thread, Take 2. Restarting it here so that the other thread that ignores the spirit of the OP can continue as they are and we try again. 

 

The original intent and spirit from the post of that thread by @Walker: 

 

Quote

As I'm sure is the case with lots of people here who grew up in the States, I grew up with Mr. Rogers as a big part of my early years TV diet. Like lots of people, I always looked back on him fondly as a part of the milieu of toddler-to-nine-year-old innocence and wonder, but beyond that I never gave the man an awful lot of thought--he simply occupied the same part of my memory banks as Big Bird, Elmo, and Lavar Burton--midday PBS magic.

 

Then yesterday I read this article.

 

And today I read this one.

 

They're both long, but Tom Junod has the gift of gab and keeps the stories flowing. To anybody with a bit of time on their hands, I think they're very worthwhile reading. I don't suggest we try to emulate Mr. Rogers' outward manifestation (shit, I don't know that I could for more than ten minutes if I tried), but his unwavering commitment, his discipline, his ability to influence others, his boddhisattva's compassion, his dauntless contentedness just being his own weird self, his gentleness, and his power (evidenced more than once in these articles, and most palpably so both in the brief closing of the Esquire article as well as the writers' reflections twenty years later in the Atlantic piece) are inspiring. What a life, and what a surprisingly uplifting thing to read in a day when 9 times out of 10 it's better to know less about celebrities, not more!

 

Mr. Rogers to me was an example of what it was like to imagine the kind of father figure I wanted growing up when growing up in an abusive and dysfunctional home. I ended up meeting individuals just like him, and I would describe some of my own internal arts teachers as being very much like him, including my own teacher who lives in Pittsburgh, where Mr. Rogers was a resident. 

 

Become the change that you seek in this world is not the quote I would use to describe what attracted me to Mr. Rogers and individuals like him, but rather, you become what you wish to change. I hated the dysfunction and abuse, and saw that there was someone who could be a decent man, even on TV, and wishing for him as a child after all the beatings and verbal indignities I endured, I found through my friends individuals who are capable of unconditional love, who are sincere, who do care about you and encouraging and inspiring without any force or imposition. 

 

Granted, I'm still a tsundere with a hair-trigger temper and have plenty of shortcomings, but when I'm around them or the memory of them, they remind me that good people see the best in us and remind us that it’s there even if we don’t see it. 

Edited December 7, 2019 by Earl Grey

[Everything]

He has been yet another drift wood in my life, as is all being and becoming evermore here and now, hinting evermore at the fact that all is well. And that we can always allow ourselves to witness that, under any and all conditions, regardless of any and all conditions, unconditionally, being and becoming evermore here and now, through the source that is the one that is of the Dao that you truely are being and becoming evermore effortlessly and joyfully here and now.

 

To know thyself thus. Coming into the alignment with the ever expanding nature that is of all being and becoming evermore here and now.  Is to allow it to be revealed to you ongoingly more effortlessly and joyfully here and now.