The word “codependent” drives me crazy.  Probably because my mind constantly wrestles with old beliefs and feelings where my actions clearly are tangental to behaviors outside my control.  There is an old Tibetan master, Atisa, who says we are “controlled by others by compassion.”

In modern language, I’m assuming that means when behavior of the “other” (partner, lover, boss, grocery clerk, insurance agent, unemployment website, phone answering recording cutoff voice, ad infinitum) is supremely irritating, we are thus called (controlled) to move to compassion.

It seems like a hysterically impossible idea.  No matter what–disaster, despair, death, addiction, long days of driving and flying, deteriorating bodies, alienated family–we are to have a trigger inside of us that automatically flow with compassion, flexibility and warmth.

Today, I practice that warmth to myself.  Recognizing that in all these paths, horizon goals, inertia dead-end mazes, my Lady, my Lord, the Tao, bird calls, and cedar Tree stillness is Present here and now.