“There is a madman inside of you who is always running for office–whv vote him in?  For he never keeps the accounts straight.  He gets all kinds of crooked deals happening all over town that will just give you a big headache.”  Hafiz

Yup.  There is this monkey in my head that steals my wallet and laughs hysterically waving it in front of my face before it scampers away.  It screams when the clouds get dark and it huddles under the jungle leaves and disappears when I need support.

The mind is tricky and tells horrible stories of lions and tigers and bears coming to GET me!

That is why I like to laugh along with the heart.  She lounges with the Divine cougar–strong, confident and magnificent.  The Goddess and my heart can sit in all kinds of heat watching as the monkey slowly comes over and fans us, brings us frosty glasses of iced mango tea and washes our feet.

So worry grabbed my throat yesterday.  Squeezed tight.  Couldn’t breathe.  Froze my mind with fear.  Stories held me hostage–what might, what is happening, who did what, what will be?!?!

The antidote for this addiction is tedious, but eventually worked.  Release.  Let go.  Surrender.  Hand over.  Set aside.  Release.  Let go.  Surrender.  Hand over.  Set aside.  Release.  Let go.  Surrender.  Hand over.  Set aside.  Release.  Let go.  Surrender.  Hand over.  Set aside.

Over and over again and again.  Punctuated with quiet almost tearless sobbing in the tiny bathroom stall of privacy.  Feeling the feelings.  Honest with the heart.  Honoring the human idea of love wanting to help.

Knowing from years of experience that drinking or smoking or pills or shopping or gossip or fixing or even three soda pops won’t do anything for that plague of mental interrogation and anxiety.

So here You go.  She’s Yours.  Kicking and screaming, I place her in Your hands.  Right where she is, right where she always is.  I see your smiling face nod and gratefully take her to Your heart.  You are the ultimate Mother, after all.

It’s a question of mind over matter, and if you don’t have a mind, it really doesn’t matter.

That is such a Truth.  It is the mind that plagues a perfectly good morning with worry.  Missing persons, cryptic phrases, the unknown.  Whether the past or future, the mind takes all fantastic ideas of catastrophe and, like a bad fairy godmother, dresses it up in scary vampire clothes, ready to suck the blood out of me at any second I swoon.

Amazing how the mind makes up stories that seem so real based on NOTHING.  You’d think [sic] that with all that imagination we’d be swimming in fabulous inventions of ease, comfort and goodness.  Well, I suppose we are.  And then there are those mornings that just hit sideways.

I make up a new story today.  Today the green is smiling just for me.  The grandmother cedars await for me this weekend along the river.  I hear them whisper in the wind–“Stand.  And sway.  Stand.  And sway.”  I am rooted forever in Gaia, not in made-up memories of future fears.  My faith in being held–in all of us being embraced–in Eternal Good is the sun that never leaves the sky.  No matter the clouds, the steadfast Earth and warm love Sun of You are the essence of my presence.

When I get stuck in this body world, I’m out of sorts.  Nothing seems to work, my body is getting old and tired of this gravity game.  The flesh sags, the feet twist, the bones get tired.

If I am imprisoned in my feelings, I’m like a fly in the middle of the room locked behind some invisible fencing. I pace back and forth in the fog. 

My mind will hold me captive for days, weeks, a lifetime, telling me stories about the murky past and the hysterical myths of the future.  Vultures swarm and lions roar behind dark shadows of what should have been and with might be that make me freeze in fear.

But when I dive into Your Love, I am weightless, thoughtless, heartless–without any hurt of earthly timely calculated feelings.  I am free to swim without effort in the compassionate and endless waters of good and plenty, here and now, breath and stillness, ease and comfort.

Maybe it is in our hardware.  Maybe we are hardwired to hit some kind of physical wall in order to have the heart seek out more.  It might be that we are here specifically to “fail” in the material sense, just in order that we find there is something beneath the veil of today’s to-do list.

I’ve got one out there–a “to do” list.  It has been sitting for a couple days now.  People to call, things to do, bills, retirement, blah blah blah.  Clearly these tasks do not hold my interest unless I am at the edge of a deadline.

I thirst for a day sitting and letting the ocean’s horizon carve a memory into my soul.  I want to settle into the sand long enough that I begin to hear the rounded rocks whisper cosmic secrets.  I yearn to get off this lumpy camel ride and enter Your fragrant tents, rest on Your soft cushions and let You brush my hair.

“I am saved from all reason and surrender understanding.” (Hafiz again)

I wish I could do that.  But I ache with feeling that I’m just not trying enough.  That I used the wrong words, that I’m not investigating properly or asking the right questions.  I compare myself to others and I don’t see what they see.  They start to describe a concept and I follow and follow and then I’m lost, nodding my head as if I get it.  But I don’t.

I surrender into nothing.  I release my heart to forget it all and dive into the Divine forest of sweet breath.  I let the trees do the talking for me today.

What I mean when I say “trying times” is that I’m trying too hard.  Do you recognize that?  I stretch and worry, double-book and try to please everyone on all sides. It doesn’t work very well.  The person that is NOT getting pleased is me.

I want to say “No, back off please.  I am NOT responsible for her work.”  even though I’m her manager.  argh.  And then to another I want to say, “Get out from that desk and let me sit there to look at that work you say you are doing.  You are NOT listening to me.”

Yeah.  That will work.  Sure.

So today is about calmly recognizing that I cannot be everything to all people.  Especially when I’m stretched thin and unrecognizable myself.  Being cranky does not fix things.  Or else I’d be living in luxury and peace.  HA.

I am free to love me.  I am at peace and ease to be me.  Every breath reminds me of the truth of me–which is a home for You.

So this morning I’ve been writing about the excruciating practice of self-improvement (argh, hate that phrase, but it it true).  Here it is:

We
have a choice to be different.  Being at
this step, we have shown signs of our willingness to be different, we’ve
seen how we don’t want to be, recognize what it would be to be different, and
now we practice. 

We are creatures of habit, and we’ve all moved through new habits–the
fact that you are here tonight is proof that you can do this–and want to do
more.  Recovery has taught me to practice
awareness and compassion when I see where I could be better. 

But literature
reminds us–compassionately–that we are human. 
Sometimes I think the whole trick to being human is to make a successful
mistake everyday.  We will never be perfect,
but we can be perfectly in spiritual progress by embracing and learning from
our bumps. 

How easy is it for you to
admit a mistake?  What do you do
feel?  How do you react?  What is the process by which you move on to
self-forgiveness and self-love towards change? 
Do you believe that mistakes are self-correcting?

And I take this into the day with my new prayer:

I claim through prayer and meditation a closer closer loving embrace with the Divine as I willingly stroll on the Path of Heaven with all my heart, body and soul.

I mean it reigns supreme!  But then again, maybe there are rules of laughter.

Do it all the time.
Especially when things get tough–just laugh hysterically and people will keep their distance.
Save funny pictures and review them often to chuckle.
Get friends together and have laugh contests.
See who can find the funniest birthday card.
Laugh until you are afraid you’re going to pee.
Get lots of laugh lines–they are badges of living a good life.
Laugh at yourself–you will be forever amused.
Get friends you can even laugh AT–they will turn around and laugh at you and you will be laughing together at the memories of more laughter.

Laughter is joy in action and if you are truly blessed
You will go out laughing.

First there is this weird thing called a body to deal with.  Eating, breathing, pooping.  Constant circulation of in and out.  Then there are emotions–feelings–urges, insights, tendencies, default stumbling blocks of old memories turned into irritations.

Then there is this feeling that I am a fish out of water.  Like I should really be weightless, or not having to breath every few seconds, or that just walking is a pain and tiresome.

Sure, I get the idea of “lessons” that keep bumping into me–but what’s with that?!  Did I really volunteer for this survival course?  That I won’t survive, by the way. 

And I thirst.  Every morning waking, I yearn for something I seem to lack.  With each feeling that goes through my body, I seem to be missing something, like my heart is only half-made and it every day seeks its completion.

I know it is You.  Her.  Him.  It.  The Trees.  The Rain.  The Green.  That’s why I press my cheek against the rough bark of a 300 year old douglas fir–You are in there.

Because the One I love lives inside of you, I get as close to you a I can.