The evil twin
Yes dear readers, the evil twin is back, the one who sits around and harps about how things are all going to hell in a hand-basket. Surely there is a way out of my miasma, but which path to take? Is it the road untraveled, the road more familiar but still risky, is it non-action or bold action that is required, should we sell the LaLa and move to an apartment, should we, should I, should should should?
I don’t know and it is the not knowing that is crushing.
So I’m trying to revive the other twin, the one who is learning to yield to the unknowing, the one who ought to be embracing non thought, the one who knows that all these things will come to pass and yet none of them matter. That is the lesson I’m trying to learn but the evil twin keeps usurping all the mental real estate and crowding out the new way with the old way of worry and anxiety and dread.
If the little voices in your head are getting you down, meditate. The Dalai Lama tweeted this this morning:
September 22nd, 2011 at 4:50 pm
I’ve carried this bit of paper with me so long the colors have all faded. It hasn’t gone up on the wall of my Nth cube in my Xth job but I think today I will stick it up (or bring it home as that’s where I spend 90% of my work time). It’s from Daily Zen, dated Jly 2, 2001
What I point out to you
Is on that
You shouldn’t allow yourselves
To be confused by others.
Act when you need to,
Without further hesistation or dbout
People today can’t do this.
What is their affliction?
Theri afflictionis in
their lack of self-confidence.
If you do not spontaneously
Trust yourself sufficiently,
You will be in a frantic state,
Pursuing all sorts of objects
And being changed
By those objects,
Unable to be independent.
–Linhji (d. 867).
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:15 pm
I think I just started realizing what is wrong – there are a lot of Cassandras hanging around telling me it’s all doom and gloom. Then I thought good grief it is doom and gloom and who am I to think otherwise and then I remembered, oh right, I’m a contrarian by nature, so I am supposed to be marching to the beat of a different drum the one that says – HELLO EVERYBODY when everything is going to hell in a hand-basket, it’s time to swim, backstroke, breaststroke, but swim by god, swim.
I did a lot of things today to begin to reel back in my world. More will be revealed. But one step was important, we put the LaLa up for rent – not all of it, but we’ve decided to move to the back and rent out the front not forever, not for always, but for now, to free up my mind and wallet to start dreaming big again, to start being the master of my domain.
I’m putting this house to work for me since I’ve spent the last six years working for it. I thought this was rather brilliant if I must say so myself. We think we have our first tenant – two months starting January. Then we are going to start mixing it up around here freeing up all the conventional trappings that I bought into and beginning the lifestyle we want – travel, no stress, ownership, creativity – the life yet unlived that is wailing at me like her demon lover.
Randomly, I picked up the Te of Piglet and it fell open to the page where Pooh tells Piglet why Eyeore dashed his bright attitude because there are people who do that because it makes them feel big because they are feeling small.
I’ve been frantic M – I envy your months of reckoning that await you – and I’m trying to formulate my own form of independence by throwing out all of the notions that were never mine to begin with – I mean come on, I was raised in hotels, in other countries, born to a gypsy, with a questionable medical degree, living life to its utmost without buying into the structure that everybody else was trapped in – I wrongly sought the opposite of what my father taught me. Tsk tsk.
It’s a brave new world but that’s not to say that there will not be those kinds of days when I don’t look down for stones that will fit in my pocket while I’m out walking.