You haven’t gotten what you wanted? Or maybe you have missed your goal by a mile. Are you sad? But you have lived and eaten (other forms of) life. You have lived with the support of the entire universe. You ought to be satisfied with that.
You have seen many things and realized that what is bad can also be good. Even the things that troubled you before, such as unpleasant sights, sounds, or adversities in various guises, can sometimes rally around you. It’s as though they are telling you they did not mean to do you any lasting harm. Shit happens. That’s all.
As I said elsewhere, running may help us cope. “At some point, you may run even while only half awake so as to keep ahead of your all-consuming thoughts or shake them loose.”
Thoughts tie you to what you see, hear, smell, and touch. They leave you stranded on your path, whatever your path happens to be, with hopes of progress and joy steadily receding. Before long, you are thirty, then forty, even fifty. But it’s never too late. The universe, which has supported you all along, still stands by you—at least for now.
When he was young, my son liked to imagine himself traveling in deep space.
I responded: Then you already know how to meditate. You close your eyes and imagine infinite space and the hum of a spaceship engine. That’s all you need to begin to turn within.
I like to get up and begin my day running. I like to run early while my mind is relatively unburdened. It makes it easier to feel the deep sleep that still clings to me like a faint odor.
In those moments, while I am fleet of foot, what repulsed me suddenly lets go. It becomes bearable, almost friendly. Instead of recalling it with distaste, I now have a wry smile or a slight curve of the lip.
The real problem, of course, is not what momentarily repulses you. You can always find a way to cope with that.
Moreover, one may even acquire the ability to ride these revulsions one day. Ride them like the horses that they are. Each past ill or wrong as swift as the wind.
What previously held you tight may become the push that you need.
You accept them as they are, and your stolen mental space is slowly returned to you.
We are altogether too obsessed with likes and dislikes.
You see, the real problem is not what repulses you. The real problem is you are attracted to too many things. Your attention span is short, and you latch onto one thing after another as though your life depends on it, sometimes intensely. Success, fame, money, the opposite sex, a bigger house, a shiny car, whatever your poison, can take you far away from yourself until you are completely lost.
Isn’t it perverse to welcome what repulses you and turn away from what attracts you? Maybe so, but what else can a person do while riding the swift war horse with a spirit sword in their hand they know not what to do with?
Attractive things distract and mislead. You imagine that they would make you happy or your life more tolerable. They stoke your wants and lie to you when you are not vigilant, only to leave you cold and stranded in the end.
But don’t we need those shiny things? Aren’t they life-affirming in some way? They make us get out of bed each day, don’t they?
It is an illusion.
Eating, for example, is a necessity. On the other hand, dressing up your food, massaging it, or doing unnecessary things to it to appeal to your senses is not life-affirming at all. They prettify it to beyond recognition so that they can sell you what you don’t need or make you eat when you are not hungry.
When your wants far outweigh your needs, your spirit sword has become a heavy stump, and you have fallen off your war horse.
You are swinging the spirit sword, or the sword is swinging you. Either way, something is being sliced. Let those shiny things be! It’s your thoughts—the words in your head—that needed slicing.
To terminate those thoughts that blind you to your true nature, consider my son’s imaginary spaceship. Confine yourself to it and then hum with the engine.
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