October 28, 2021

01

We maintain our balance and harmony
by being aware of it
throughout each day.

Pausing to take a
Balance/Harmony Inventory
from time-to-time
will be a great addition to your schedule.

Simply sit quietly,
focused on your degree
of balance and harmony,
and allow yourself 
to become aware 
of the wobbly nature of the world
and your life,
focusing on the things
that are destabilizing forces
especially impacting you here and now.

Just observe what arises 
in the silence
without being hijacked
and carried away by any of it.

Simply refuse to react emotionally
to anything that comes to mind.
Check it in
and tuck it into your awareness,
and return to watching what emerges
in the stillness.

That's it.
When your allotted time 
for the exercise expires,
take a deep breath
and return to your life in the world,
trusting your own psychic forces
to distance you 
from the upsetting realities,
as you do your part
in remaining emotionally distant
from all of the terrors of the day
(and night).

Notice when your balance and harmony
shift back toward the normal range,
and look forward to your next
"Time Out For Sanity
(Balance and Harmony)."

–0–

02

The primary source of the pain of life
is our emotional response
to the experience of being alive.

We wail over everything.
Cut off the water at the tap!
Pick yourself up!
Dust yourself off!
And get back in the saddle!

What's with all the whining, 
crying,
pouting
and complaining?

Shake it off
and do what needs to be done!

Nursing our wounds
doesn't heal our wounds.
Healing happens
as we grow beyond our woundedness.
We grow beyond our woundedness
by not feeding our resentment,
not giving vent to our anger,
not soaking in our disappointment,
not stoking our bitterness,
not rehashing our grievances,
not counting our losses,
not remembering our sorrows,
not bearing our grudges,
not plotting our revenge,
and not seething with fury...

What needs to be done
is waiting for our willful devotion
and attention.

And what needs to be done
has nothing to do with our 
having been slighted.
It is what the moment is calling for
beyond our feelings at the moment.

Find that and do it,
and let that be that.

All the Buddha needed to say.