Abode

A teacher in my life today shared something with me that feels poignant. She was referring to the book the Tao of Healing. She said that the abode is the seat of the mind. It is the place that the mind most comfortably rests. So if you are continually having controlling thoughts, you mind will be most comfortable when it has control. If you mind is often thinking of how it wishes things were different, it will be most comfortable with dissapointment. The same is true with thoughts that we would label "positive". The teaching was not to change your thoughts to all positive ones because even then, when circumstances are challenging, the mind will be filled with swords. The teaching is to watch the mind and to be curious about where it often dwells.

I am taking this in. Being in a period of such transition I am finding myself very uncomfortable most of the time. I feel confused and disoriented about my future and yet there have been few things in my external environment that are overtly threatening or dangerous. Yet, I have felt like my life is at risk. My mind has been seated in thoughts of fear and control. I realize how much I have wanted things to be a certain way because I thought that having control would make the outcome better, or at least being predictable, more safe. Instead, my fearful thinking has wrestled away my sense of adventure and appreciation for what is actually happening. I haven't been enjoying my free time, I have been stressed that I shouldn't have it. Note: no use arguing with what is.

So I have stopped pushing. Talking to a friend the other day (after the OAEC internship let down, ouch) I used the cliche metaphor of feeling like "all the doors I tried to walk through were being closed in my face." She asked, "then why are you pushing so hard?" Well, I need to keep trying, right? If I don't make any effort, nothing will happen. Or not. Things are happening all the time, at every moment. I needed to wait for the tide to change. So for the last few days I have been withdrawing, shining the flashlight into the cobwebby corners of my most familiar and least visited abodes. I screamed and took some baths too. Today having lunch with my cousin (he actually arrived at the restaurant with his own coffee stained cup and just drank tea) at a Chinese place in the city my fortune read "All your work will soon pay off."

The tides are turning? Or, I am in greater harmony with the nature of mind.