03

We are looking for what? What would it take to be satisfied and content? What person, living or dead, actual or fictional, is your ideal of having lived the way you would like to live? So that, at the end, you could be proud of the life you lived? Keep that person before you as you step into your day, and into each situation as it arises in each day. How would that person do it? Do your life? In this set of circumstances? Here and now? Do it like that! Become the actress/actor playing the role of that person in the life you are living. Do your best imitation of the person throughout your day. See what shifts for you, what changes, what transformations come about-- either in your life or in your demeanor. How are things different in your life as the other person? Changing our relationship with our life can be life changing. Because nothing changes until we do.
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02

Being in the moment is the hardest thing to do, the hardest thing to be. We are just passing through here and now on our way to somewhere else. And, when we get there, it will then be here, now, and we will be on our way to somewhere else. Always going. Never being where we are, when we are. Always impatient. Always bored. Always pining for better. Anywhere but here. Anything but this. What can I say to change things? I can only hope to say what I see, and to see what is there, which is here, now. Beyond that, the forces of fate and destiny are at play in the world. "And the beat goes on" (Sonny Bono). In the meantime, there is this moment, and we can sit with it, dance with it, rush through it, ignore it, watch it closely to see exactly when now becomes then, and discover for ourselves that now never ends. It is always now. It is here that is always changing. And both are always calling for something. Asking something of us. What is it, here and now? How can we help? What does here and now need from us? What will we do about that? Every moment comes down to this. What will we do? Here, now?
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01

Things are the way they are because it is easier that way. Nature's course tends to be the course of least resistance. Why waste energy? Inertia is the tendency of a body in motion to remain in motion, and of a body at rest to remain at rest. Momentum is a function of mass and velocity, friction and slope. Change happens over time in response to its environment, and in relation to its immediate surroundings. How different we can be depends on factors approaching infinity-- but, our tendency is to not be different at all. And, our preferences strongly impact our performance. Put all of this together and that is why things are as they are. It is easier that way. The energy required to change has to come from somewhere. What is our motivation? Alcoholics generally require a near-death experience to pop out of alcoholism into "I'm Jim and I'm an alcoholic." We are all alcoholics on some level, to some degree, in some sense. It takes a lot of effort to exchange our way for The Way. Why bother? What's in it for us? Who cares? What do we care? Things are fine just as they are. And that is why things are as they are. It is going to take a lot for them to be different. The Tao can only wait. And let the dead bury the dead. As nearly dying does what it can to wake up those who can be waked up while there is still time left for living.
Amen. ‘Nuff said!
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