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.

I heard a kid say in a letter to Santa Claus: “I don’t believe in you, but I think you’re a good idea.”  And isn’t it funny that so many people who don’t believe in god spend time fighting with it all the same? 

There are days that nothing makes sense, death seems not like a door but a slam in the face.  Illness is just too puzzling and brothers thousands of miles away, and even further in the heart, just take turns out of sight.   Memories are more like a scornful tease than warmth. 

But Krishna talks about “calm gentle” stillness and purity.  While the mechanics of my daily life scream to me from the other room, over my tense back and neck muscles, like hungry cats. 

I rest in the timeless here and now.  I breathe into the moment.  I know nothing, I hold nothing, I claim everything, I am that I am.

“Actions do not cling to me, because I am not attached to their results.”  Thus, says Krishna, “I am free.”

I shake off the results, the finished product, my boss’s reaction, my brother’s harsh remarks.  I am teflon and all comments slide off me like my ass on ice.  I throw up my hands and surrender to the law of release.  I unclasp my tight fingers and let the butterfly free.

“Perform all work carefully,” the sweet image of God said, “guided by compassion.”  Carefully I move through the day, knowing that I am an actor of love, moving love, creating love, watching love, hearing love.

Sitting like a sluggish love early in the morning, I warm myself in Your Presence, my dear brilliant blue charioteer.

I have to trust before I can lean.  But that’s like thinking about each breath.  I trust the Spirit.  I don’t trust me.  Again and again the truth is that I cannot fail, only walk a detour before I see the hand of Grace in my life.  It is always and everywhere.

Evolving through the breathing of this Spirit’s grace is about relishing in the leaning, aware always that my life depends on my breath of grace.  So I should let grace lead my day, direct my thinking, guide me in all right actions.

I am pulled from matter to spirit, pouting to grace, argument to release each moment.  What would love do? is my guiding light today.  How am I evolving through love right here and right now.  In each action, thought, feeling, let me see the uplifting brilliance of the sweet Path of heaven in front of me.

Especially when I say “no”.  When I choose to do less.  At that moment someone asks me for an appointment, to move up, to do more, I see the Way of love to say, “no thank you.  I prefer to sit and be still.  To know no thing.”

Love is weird, love sucks, love is stupid, love is forever and ever.  One lover in the next room, the other a brother very distinctly across the continent.  My heart aches for him so very far away facing a life change that will join him until the end.

But then again, we face that every day crossing the street, or driving 70 mph on the highway trusting the engines made by hundreds of hands throughout thousands of countries.

No matter how battered, the heart is held by Spirit.  The spirit of me is endless, the little fist-sized human heart pumps just for so long.  I throw myself on the Path of Spirit, dragging my little achy, stretched-out human weeping heart.