Be Kind, Plato said

I was so dark and gnarly yesterday.

It was hella hot out, and I only got maybe an hour of complete sleep Thursday night. I had errands to run and other little life things I told a friend I'd help with yesterday morning, then lunch with mom and there's nothing that disappoints me more than paid-for bad food. Next was work at 3 and by the time I got in there I thought I'd fall over I was so miserable. Of course I got my period. Sometimes even the thought of PMA (choosing the positive mental) just pisses me the fuck off.

I have learned, however, to take myself--especially at my most foul--lightly. Be kind, Plato said, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. To practice this most effectively I have begun at home: compassion for my self.

There is a Sanskrit word for the Western understanding of Changing. It is Anicha. Anicha is the Buddhist quality of human nature: the flowing whimsy of the unswept mind.

Liken Anicha as a concept to a stream. You're chilling waterside, in the woods, watching the water go by. Ah it's so mellow, the air feels like dancing, the trees are sighing you can hear them. The stream sounds like a hushhh. The water is one body, but keep your eyes on one singular spot. Watch there goes a leaf floating on top. There goes a funny rivulet of bubbles....Now nothing but water but even it fuses and blends and seems to change forms, now a water bug floats along followed by a thin brown branch. Changing, changing. Anicha. The water surface changes and yet. It's always the same. This is the mind, the ego self. There too is the watcher by the stream. Quiet witnesser, where breathing lives.

And so this is the alchemy of magical thinking, Anicha. What 12-step rooms teach as This Too Shall Pass. (And come again, too) There was a time, a long time for me, that hopelessness of thought or emotion or physical slug trapped me, like Chinese handcuffs the harder I'd yank to get away the worse it'd take hold. Samsara is Sanskrit, too, and basically means those little mental loops we get stuck in, the ego with its roughian bloody jawgrip it takes hold, clamps down and causes the resistancy to growwww. Maybe your little loop of samsara is about paying a bill. Ah there it floats on by oh crap it's due next week... but that's when I was going to get my oil change too...Here's where you loosen up, you watch the thought without chomping down, ahhh there it goes. Or where the deathgrip grabs it, ego ego human control, takes hold. The looping intensifies. The loop track gets bigger. More and more fear and loathsomeness...What the fuck's the point? My always final absolute last bad thought in that miserable loop.

Somewhere in the center is compassion. For ourselves, our sick twisted imperfectly perfect little human minds. And oh the great joy of laughing at it, not taking any of it too seriously because why? If heaviness is just going to increase the misery flow? This is first axiom of those Eastern Wisdom Teachings: Life is suffering, because of addiction to the ego's flow. Detachment just means the wisdom of Anicha. And compassion is an action word, love and gentleness with ourselves....

What if all life was just about enjoying the flow, being open as possible to the nutty updown of the ever present moment?

What if Anicha gave you the power to choose for it to be so?

What if?

Or better~why not?

Mercury went Retrograde yesterday, nows a great time to practice lightening up on your self. Read all about here.