Spring
We long for the renewal and freshening of spring but when it FINALLY arrives we realize Spring is hard work! Chicks have break out of the egg, seeds must bust open the earth, buds must forcibly resist nibbles of the hungry deer. It's pretty - but it’s certainly never "easy." It’s no time to lie back and relax. We now have a real opportunity to shed the husk of our old selves and build a new one from the ground up. But that means we have to create all new habits. It’s laborious at first, bringing all our actions and assumptions into consciousness, studying them, evaluating them and trying something different. No wonder we fall into bed exhausted at night! Now is the time for journaling, calorie counting, list making, checking boxes. I WILL go to yoga I will take a nature walk I will listen to one hour of Pema Chodron check check check. Then tomorrow we do it all again! New muscles are forming. Ouch. Mantra “I accept and enjoy change.”
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38. Aspiration
Is there is something inherently discouraging about aspiration? If so, it might be the fear that if we ever reach the summit, then we will be “forced” to go “down” the other side. But if we never “summit,” are we by definition forever unfulfilled? “Aspirations” are only maps, and maps are two dimensional tricks of vision. The world we transect is real, wild and constantly shifting. Our eyes, our memories are in permanent flux. Tricks of language are called “semantics”; they bog us down in discussions about differences and definitions that don’t really exist. What matters is our breathing, existent self, coping with the journey by turns brave, confused, eager, frightened, hopeful. We must allow our souls to play out their richest octave of highs and lows as we proceed along our healing quest. As practicing aspirants, we will cultivate a panoply of response as our badge of courage. Mantra; “I accept all of myself, my fears as well as my aspirations.” 37.Persistence
“Fundamental attribution error” turns out to be much more significant than when I studied it in psychology. We humans suffer from a built-in blindness for “taking things personally”: when events turns out to be caused by movements, crises and even wars that had nothing to do with our little plans and lives. We interpret entropy itself – an inevitability – as some kind of negative commentary the universe is making on our basic spiritual worth! The worst aspect of this misperception is deflated hope – a sense of failure – “giving up” based on nothing more than a change of cosmic season. As we all know, nothing is achieved without persistence. The mere existence of hope creates the future despair cancels. We simply have to keep going. Long after we want to, care to or can even remember why, we must keep putting one foot in front of the other. Just get through today! Tomorrow is ALWAYS a new day. We get second, third, hundredth chances. Mantra: “I keep going because I cherish hope and hope cherishes me.” 36. Passion
Zest, joy, gusto: rocket fuel to get us through the tough times and out of the trough of despair. Despair is hopelessness; the feeling that nothing changes, ever; it only get slightly worse and entropy must inevitably win. We all feel like that sometimes. But things have already changed for the better. But where is our passion and what is it? We are going to have to try everything. The questions we are asking ourselves come from the restlessness that propels us to move. It is as if spring is happening inside ourselves. We are looking at other people differently, too. We want people who are restless and questing, just as we are. An evening in front of the TV slowly consuming melted cheese sounds more like a recipe for death than a good time. Instead – let’s dance! Mantra: I will feel, express and share joy.” Nurturing
Time to trade pleasures that degrade for pleasures that compound. All earthly systems press towards growth or death; it is the divine imperative. There’s no such thing as “stasis”; Stasis is growth or death become invisible. So all our choices push towards the strengthening or weakening of our entity. Choices that “compound’ mean that long after the choice itself it still benefits you. Choices that “degrade” mean long after the taste has vanished from your lips and the party is over the choice is still weakening you. Let’s push toward growth, toward strength, and take warm pleasure in the satisfaction that we’re building our own health, our own joy, our own future. Which choices will you make today? Mantra, “I choose growth”. ![]() Meditation
Mindfulness is tough because it’s counter-intuitive. We fill ourselves with jangle, with drama, with controversy, all day long; our “education” out of our own brains is a slow layering of voices, ideas, contentions. But for those special “sculptors” among us; the “parers”, the “curators” – “emptying ourselves” must be the discipline that we seek. The world is too much with us. We have tried everything, we have savored everything, we have carried everything and now we are burdened. Meditation is the way the lay those burdens down. Can emptiness be healing? It suggest re-building – reboot, a re-design. We reduce ourselves to the most basic component of the moment: breath. In – filling lungs, swelling muscles – and then out: complete emptying, complete relaxation. No thought. When a thought comes to us, we turn it into a balloon and let it go, let it sail away. We are US, ourselves, alive in this moment, breathing in and breathing out. Aaah. Mantra: ”I am enough in my most basic self.” Chrysalis
We must commit to living our own life, not living anyone else’s. This is harder than it looks. It has been to other people’s advantage to enforce our lack of boundaries, to the point where we don’t know who we are. Possibly we have been leading a fantasy life, flitting from one existence to another inside our heads, switching channels whenever we get bored, alternately soothing and drugging ourselves with medicinal and alcoholic mood elevators. Time to face the fact that we will have a single physical embodiment, ruled entirely by ourselves, subject to laws we have yet to discover but can suspect. Who will we be? Confined to one choice, we are terrified. How about if we select “flexible”? Well, there’s only one way to get that. Training! We commit to exploring our own boundaries – tracing our edges – safely, carefully and with the thoughtful oversight of trustworthy friends or professionals. 32.) Waterfall
We are born in fluid, governed by wave dynamics. Change is our only constant, no matter how stuck in the mud we may feel. The very cells in our bodies rush eternally towards an unknown sea. In the midst of flux, in the wind-tunnel of longing, we yearn for peace. We will find it in the art of balance, poised on surfboards of self-knowledge above the rushing torrent. Forgive yourself for yesterday, give thanks for this beautiful day and look towards tomorrow. Mantra: “I forgive myself.” The Bridge
Where are we going? We long to shape our own ends but we can’t see what world lies on the other side of this bridge. We look longingly backward – and yet we have worked so hard to come this far. Looks like we’re going to have to surrender to the healing journey. The moment we stop healing is the moment we begin to die. This is the hardest lesson. We deny ourselves childish things in order to achieve the mature ends we may not want once we get them! Jesus said we must become “little children” again to enter the Kingdom of God – the Highly Desired Place – a comment that sparked 2,000 years of speculation. Did he mean “forgetting our disappointed adult selves and totally starting over?” Or incorporating the trust and faith and joy of childhood into our matured personalities? His parables – which are all about expectations – wanting the wrong things – suggest the latter. One of the sharpest memories from my childhood is the joy of being provided for – we ate what they handed us – and they kept giving fantastic gifts/experiences! Could those unexpected gifts be what lies on the other side of The Bridge? Our mantra for today is, “I relish surprise.” Youth
We have been learners before. We have been beginners before. Remember how confusing it was? We couldn’t know what we didn’t know. We were suspicious of adults, wary of teachers. Did they really know what they were doing? Sometimes the most forceful ones, viewed suddenly in their natural habitat, didn’t appear to be living lives we – or anyone – would envy. But we were curious. We wanted to process, to become, to grow up. So we took one step at a time, savoring it cautiously, the way we tasted food as infants. Do I like this or not? Maybe yes? Maybe no? We keep trying it to find out, and before we know it, we’ve downloaded a huge body of knowledge into our smooth little brains and our stride swings wider. More confidently. It’s almost as if we know where we are going. Mantra “Today I will keep an open mind.” |
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September 2022
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