CHANGING WEATHER

    Traveling by car through a gap in the mountains is an interesting experience weather-wise. Sometimes it's sunny on one side and raining on the other, or raining and snowing, or windy and calm. It's the same day and only a matter of distance, but one side is sometimes as different from the other as night is different from the day.
     And maybe that's the only thing that separates our moods as well... from dark to light and sun to rain... perhaps it's all just a matter of traveling the distance on whatever road we're on.

If I just keep going when I am feeling dark and cloudy, I am likely to hit a patch of sunlight before too long.

THE POWER OF INTENTION AND KEEPING ON

     We experience great benefit in life from simply keeping on, from putting one foot in front of the other no matter what, and waking up and filling the day with action and positive intention. Even if the results we seek do not happen on our time-scale, and even if they do not seem to happen at all, the ultimate benefit of staying the course is progress, and more progress, and more progress. So long as we are headed in the right direction, and catch ourselves if we start to swerve away, we can't help but make progress. The trick is knowing what we're aiming for. That's what makes all the difference in the end.

I direct the action of my life by the intention of my spirit, and change my intention if I want to change my life.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

     Perhaps the most important understanding that we can acquire in life is the understanding of cause and effect. If we get that for every choice we make, there is a corresponding consequence, we might be less reckless with our choosing, and live better lives. We tend not to think beyond our instant gratification, and choose based on impulse and demand. And we pay for such choices. We pay dearly. We become like pinballs getting whacked from one day to the next and one experience to the next. We are reactive. We claw for our lives. But if we slow down enough to consider the result of our choices, then at least we can keep our options open.
     We have more power over the condition of our life situation than we might realize, but we have to assert ourselves. We have to learn how to captain our ship and trim our sails so that we can weather the storms that will inevitably come.

Before I choose anything, I pause long enough to realistically consider the potential effect of my choice. I'm willing to be less impulsive.

DRENCHED

     I made the decision to drive to work in the snow yesterday. It took me two plus hours, and at one point, I had to pull to the side of the road to fix my windshield wipers. While there, a passing truck drenched me with road spray. Salty slush saturated my shoes, socks, pants- the whole back side of me. Slamming myself back into the car, I felt a sense of righteous injustice and poor me and why did I bother and how stupid I was to make the drive in the first place-
     And yet, there was not a thing I could do about any of it. I was stuck in traffic, stuck with the weather, closer to work than to home, and sopping wet. Those were the facts. I resisted the urge to fall apart, and gathered my wits about me. At work I put my clothes in the sauna for as long as I could- they got partially dry- and then I carried on. The day unfolded, the way it always does, with its mix of blessings and challenge, and at the end of it, I had a new story to tell.

Everything that happens is a positive opportunity of some kind if I look at it the right way.

TAKING OUR TROUBLES IN STRIDE

     If we have survived the troubles and drama and near misses in our lives that we have survived, then others can too. Let's have faith in the journey. It's not meant to be easy or painless. It happens the way it does to teach us to be thoughtful and considerate and wise, to have compassion and to learn forgiveness. None of us is immune from tragedy, none from hurt, and none from death. So we don't need to take our hardships personally. We can take them in stride.

I stop expecting life to be easy. I am willing to let life be life.

FRESH DIRECTION

     Alcoholism is an insidious disease. Its victims are lost in swirling darkness and vicious cycles of obsession and justification. And all of our various and sundry addictions are the same. They are wheels in motion, wheels of action and thinking that are spinning out of control, and the only way to stop them is to stop: to jolt the wheel and lurch to a halt. And then we have to slowly, slowly, start turning the wheel in the completely opposite direction. If we try to keep going in the same way, to "modify" ourselves, we may be able to keep pace for a bit, but eventually we will be spinning wild yet again. The only real correction is to move in an entirely new way.

I am honest about the aspects of my life that are spinning out of control, and I am willing to stop, and learn to turn slowly and steadily in a fresh direction.

THE PAST

     The past is innocent. It doesn't know what's coming. It is naive and fanciful. It has expectations of the future that are way wrong and completely off base. The past thinks it will live on forever, but looking back, we see that it cannot, and does not. People die. Marriages dissolve. Accidents happen. Lotteries are won. What was high and hopeful becomes low, and the low becomes high. Everything shifts in unexpected ways. Everything changes.
     And all we ever have, not being able to foretell the future, is our innocence as we stand today. We are pure and perfect in the present moment and that's the only thing that's really real.

I have no idea about all the things that will happen in my future so I stay in the moment and enjoy what I am experiencing now.