02

Safety, security, stability are 
the three foundational necessities
for life as we would like to live it.

They are as much an internal orientation
as they are an external reality.

Someone who has been physically/sexually/emotionally abused,
and place them in a safe/secure/stable environment,
and it will take them forever to feel safe/secure/stable.

Take someone who has been betrayed,
and how long will it be
before they can trust themselves to anyone?

This is where establishing,
deepening
and maintaining
a vitally alive relationship with our inner self 
becomes essential.

What keeps us going
if not knowing who/what we can count on?
Who/what is the most reliable source
of helpful presence in our life
than the two million year old person within
who comes packed in the DNA
of each of us
to comfort and console,
guide and direct,
us on our way through 
the contexts and circumstances 
of our daily walk?

Why don't we devote ourselves
to the care and tending of our relationship
with the Other within?

What do you think Marianne Moore meant
when she said,
"The cure for loneliness is solitude"?
Who do we find waiting for us
in our solitude but The One Who Is With Us Always?

Our "Two Million Year Old Self" (Anthony Stevens,
Carl Jung) is an aspect of our Unconscious Mind
(So-called because we are not conscious of it),
and is "The One Who Knows" within
who we experience as "A Very Present Help In Time Of Trouble,"
and is the origin of our "holy nudges,"
and "sudden inspirations,"
and "providential realizations,"
and "propitious interventions" 
in the form of things that occur to us "out of the blue,"
and change our course to "save the day"
and more than that.

Where would any of us be
without our "invisible means of support"
(Bill Moyers)?

Each of us is born with all we need
to find what we need
to make our way through our life.
Why do we ignore that,
or despise it,
in favor of "blind guides"
and bad bets?

–0–

01

Britain felt worse during the endless days of World War II.
And Rome during the forever-long collapse of the Caesars.
The people who have felt worse--
and faced worse--
through the bitter winds of time
from the beginning until now
would not fit within the confines of this country
or all countries on this planet.

So stop your whining. 
Nothing is free.

We walked into the voting booths in 2016--
or didn't vote at all--
thinking it didn't matter what we did.
Has anybody ever been more wrong over the full sweep of time?

Our assumptions,
expectations
and the things we took for granted
have us here, now.
We did not know what we were doing.
We did not care what we did.
And we are looking for someone to fix it for us.
To make it go away.

"We did it to our ownselves."
And it will be a long time gone.

So put your walking shoes on,
and step into doing what needs to be done,
one day at a time
for as long as it takes
to be at a better place,
individually and collectively.

Start by voting for Joe Biden.
And by being right about what's important.
And being willing to go to hell for what is,
because we will certainly go to hell for what isn't.

And knowing when your assumptions are invalid
and your expectations are groundless,
and when you are failing to tend your responsibilities
to democracy and all the values worth living for--
and being who we all need each other to be
for as long as life shall last.

02

Jon Kabat-Zinn
(And if you haven't watched 
his YouTube Videos 
on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction--
the shortest ones first--
what exactly are you waiting for?)
said that mindfulness and meditation
are like riding a bicycle. 

When you are learning to ride a bicycle,
you think about riding the bicycle.
When you learn to ride a bicycle,
you quit thinking about it.

The same thing applies to playing third base,
hitting a curve ball 
(or throwing one),
cooking pizza or an apple pie,
and hitting high C.
We think about it until we get it,
and then we stop thinking about it.

Always thinking about it,
always thinking about how we aren't doing it,
and when are we going to start doing it,
and who is doing it better than we are,
and why we aren't good at anything...
gets in the way of doing it.

Practice until we get it,
then stop thinking about it,
and do it.

It's like learning to walk.

–0–

01

Are you at peace with your circumstances?
Are you at-one with yourself?

Balance and harmony, Kid!
Balance and harmony!

We can gauge how well its working
by our degree of balance and harmony,
spirit, vitality and life.

When the Clashing Rocks
and Heaving Seas
disturb our inner rhythm and flow,
our outer life-in-the-world
will be at hell's gate.

We think we have to get outer
all calm and peaceful
in order to bring our inner world
into tranquil accord.

That is to have things backwards
in a cart-before-the-horse kind of way.
First inner, then outer.

It's the old story of the Taoist Master and the Drought.
The people of the drought-plagued district
asked her to come and bring the rain.
She arrived and shut herself into a hut in the village
and three days later it rained.
Asked how she did it,
she replied, 
"When I arrived, 
I found things to be out of accord 
with the Tao
and in complete disarray.
So, I closed myself off from the village,
and sought to make my peace with the situation,
and to restore my own harmony with the Tao.
And then, the rains came."

02

Maintaining our focus,
remaining centered,
balanced,
in harmonious accord with the Tao
is all there is to it.

Only fear, desire and duty
stand in our way.

And the dust of the world.

And the 10,000 things.

It is amazing that we can even
consider focus,
centering,
balance
and harmony.

And it is not surprising at all
that we have such difficulty
finding our focus,
our center,
our balance
and harmony.

We only have two tools to work with:
Our breath
and the silence.

Focusing on our breathing
and seeking the silence
provide us with an oasis
in the wasteland.

Making regular returns
to our breath
and the silence
provide us with a sacred place
amid the heaving waves 
and the clashing rocks--
all we need for regaining our focus,
finding the center,
being balanced
and in harmonious accord
with the Tao
and at peace with our life.

–0–

01

Sealing ourselves off from one thing,
opens us up to another.

We have to come to terms
with our vulnerability,
and settle for being
as safe and as secure as we can be
under the circumstances,
with all things considered.

Our life is a negotiated compromise
with "the facts of life,"
taking everything into account,
and being okay with our outcomes,
whatever they may be--
understanding "outcome"
as being just another event
on the unending road of turns 
and how we respond to them
our entire life long.

Nothing lasts forever under the right perspective.

We give up this to get that,
and pay a price for being alive.
How creative and flexible we can be,
how accepting and open,
how pliable and resilient,
how generous and kind,
how patient and yielding,
how perceptive and aware,
how long-suffering and considerate,
how enduring and responsive...
will strongly influence--
if not determine--
how lucky, blessed, and graced we are
over the full course of our life.

Being lucky, blessed and graced
are a function of being trusting and confident
in ourselves 
and our ability to respond appropriately
to whatever is happening in each situation
as it arises moment-to-moment,
day-by-day
without having to have things be otherwise.

If everything hangs on having everything just so,
we will have a hell-of-a-time receiving things
"thus come,"
and seeing what may yet become of us-in-relationship-wth
all things just as they are.

Which is the very foundation of--
 and the door open to--
the wonder and glory
of the adventure of being alive.

No adventure is what we expect it will be.
Insisting and demanding that our adventure
be what we want it to be
rules out any possibility of adventure from the start.

We belong to the road.
The road rules.
Our place is to laugh and dance along the way.
How we respond to the gifts of the road
makes all the difference.