Are we, as humans, able to be at peace?  Or are we meant on purpose, to be passionate?  The Bhagavad Gita says:

Free from self-will, aggressiveness, arrogance, anger, and the lust to possess people or things, he is at peace with himself and others and enters into the unitive state.

Yeah.  Right. I have to be willing to pull myself out of bed.  Aggressive enough to say no to certain requests and angry so I can fight for what I believe is right.  Heck, that’s what Krishna says to Arjuna in this story, telling him not to vacillate, but to do his dharma as a warrior fighting against evil.

Because, and here is the heart of the story, Krishna says “there has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.”

When time is endless, and spirit’s life is forever, passion must be in that clear crystal moment of right-ness, when every fiber of your being is focused on the here and the now.  Like here.  And now.

So I hit the wall.  Time screams in hilarity at my efforts to do.  Codependency rubs it’s hands together, relishing how I believe I have to do everything for everybody.  Anxiety thrills to the hard tight aching muscles.  And my masseuse is delighted that it will take her months to manage the concrete in my back.

Now I’ve hit the wall before in life, I’m old enough to recognize the splattering blood from my weakened stunned body.  Brushing away the sweat and grime from my eyes takes time so that I can see the path turning–sharply–in front of me.  Time to make a choice.

When I finally, tentatively, weeping, step onto a new path, the forest seems lighter, and I hear the birds twitter at my humanness.  The stream giggles at my resistance to just going with the flow.

There are still strange roots and rocks along the Way, but I am moving very slowly.  I am bruised from running nowhere.  I am watching for soft ground and I will sit and sit and sit.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet.
Around me like circles on water,
My tasks lie in their places
Where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then, what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
And the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Wendell Berry

That’s what it feels like to change.  But that’s what is needed when a stupid solid “cock-sure” force hits a wall at 90 mph.  I’m barely conscious to see the rough chunks of brokenness around me.  I’m not near the idea of what to do with the fierce breaking apart of my story.

I think I’m together–I’m apart.  I believe I help–but I may be hindering.  I feel in touch–and I am lonely. 

However, moments and more moments I do see myself sitting in the forest.  Allowing the leaves to travel in a symphonic stillness through the air, from branch to sweet carpet of earth.  I watch the sunlight settle through the tall tenderness around me.  I hear the soft nothings twittering and shifting. 

No matter the tears and the anguish and the stories and the fierce hypnotic insufficiencies that plague me, I breathe the fragrance of pines, release all human silliness and drink in Your Love surrounding me always.

What is it about a melt down that just makes me want to isolate, numb-out, turn away from all responding.  I am irresponsible–I do not want to respond to anything.  All the cues of normal life of returning calls, handling projects, finishing little tasks.  They all stop.

I am so affected by others, like a tumbleweed without roots rolling around an arid dry dusty desert.  I want to be a tall wet full solid Douglas fir, standing true for ages in the depth of an isolated unknown untrodden forest.

But I am human and I am going through a change.  Thus the anchor deep in my soul must be in the Divine calm and true.  On the outside, there is a storm.  I need to let the storm take the reins and will rebuild after the wind is finished.

Let’s just take a look at this doubt.  It is a question of self, actions, thoughts, feelings.  And in the long run, who cares whether I really am who I think I am, am right about what I do, think and/or feel?  What difference does it really make?

I can only be making a mistake.  Mistakes are just the places of learning.  Watch a baby–it learns to stand by falling.  It learns to talk by making gibberish sounds over and over again.  If I’m lucky I’m AWARE of what doesn’t work.  Now that’s progress.

It doesn’t work to try to help too many people when I don’t take care of myself.  When I ask for help from practitioners and then don’t follow their suggestions, and my progress stalls–that doesn’t work.  What seems to work is what I am not drawn to do.  Now why is that?!

Why would I rather eat toast and jam than a nice big salad?  Why would I rather sit in a tiny over-priced high mpg fast beautiful car than a smart car?

If I can just accept doubt, it doesn’t plague me.  So today I will hold hands with it as we skip through the airport for a number of hours, sitting on the floor, walking the long hallways with so many other wonderful brilliant gods dressed up as humans

“So I come to you with open arms….” a screaming lyric from an old rock song.  Today it is about surrender, letting go.  What an absurd thought to try to control in any case!  But, of course, it is fear that convinces me I have to try to control the uncontrollable.

Courage helps me with the patience to practice and learn to maneuver through new parts of life–living with a cougher, navigating through a new “smart” phone (HA!), the balance between boss and home life.  I can claim and feel serenity at any and all turns if I choose it, walk a bit away, look out at those brilliant teachers, the trees.

It’s the wisdom of knowing the difference between when the choice between serenity and courage is puzzling–that’s the prayer I have most days.  Let me sink into the wisdom that I believe is my chair, my body, my heart and the very air I breathe.

I breathe wisdom in the spirit of the air. I am inspired by the breath that fills my body, heart and soul with Your love for me.

We’ve all got flowers and weeds.  We’re a natural garden.  All nature has balance–fire and ice, floods and spring rain.  But nature is by itself, neutral.  There isn’t a bad god in the sky that purposefully creates a forest fire just to be mean.  Alternatively it isn’t a good goddess who makes sure that all the little fawns live to be old stags with huge racks.  Nature is, pure and simple.

But my human brain dresses up all sorts of stories to tell me I’m more–and less.

I’m sticking with nature today, and feeding the best of me, letting the weeds of me wither.

Feed me Wondrous One!  Feed me!

So we need inaction before we choose to act.  And we need reaction as a result of inaction and choice, I guess.  The pause is essential.

Thus I practice the pause as much as possible.  When I am out of practice, my mind races, judges, critiques, condemns, wonders and worries.  Eventually the sandstorm settles.  The horizon clears.  The path is once again right beneath my feet.

But the question remains–Am I willing to sit quietly and let the next right action come up to me?

Beating the bushes for the next (unripe) action is a natural reaction. Inaction brings screaming fear.  The practice of stillness is deep joy.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could see beyond duality?  As one blessed writing explains: “Delusion arises from the duality of attraction and aversion…[when] actions are pure, ..they are free from the delusion caused by the pairs of opposites.”

So the vision of a brother in jail, or gone, or dead is a delusion based on freedom/no freedom.  How to pull back and look at all paths as those of love and divine discovery–this is the challenge.

Keeping my focus on Spirit, on the Tallest Tree, on the soft Path in the Forest, on the Way, is the message that is voiced throughout time.  But it is truly a rare moment, even, that I can see the Divine everywhere in everything.  I am misled by many desires.  I do not have “unwavering wisdom”.

But the Charioteer reminds me–“All those who follow the spiritual path are blessed.” 

I claim that Path and blessing today from the Handsome One, the Brilliant One, the I Am that has the universe hanging in sparkling jewels upon Her neck.