Round 2 Day 8

Are you comfortable?  There are so many ways to look at this question.  Do you feel physically comfortable, is it too hot or cold out, are you wearing socks that itch you.  Of the astoundingly vast number of ways that I could possibly be uncomfortable most of them see to be within the realm of what I can control.  If I'm cold I throw on a sweater.  If an argument gets heated I can take some deep breaths, I can take responsibility for my own part of the matter, I can walk away.  If I don't like what's on TV I can change it.  I have so many options.  To consider them all is to be overwhelmed, and, I would suggest, is a total waste of time.  What's interesting are those moments in which we are uncomfortable and we have no idea how not to be.  We don't know what's going on, or what's coming, or why, or who's involved, or the timing of things, or physically how we will be feeling.

These moments are the ones that terrify us.  They are the ones that loom much larger in our minds than they do in the reality of when they're presented.  The simple way out of this mind trip is, "if you're worried about it, it's probably not a problem."  It sounds simple, and it is simple.  But we all know better than that right.

I had this sliver of a realization the other day that I've been struggling to hold onto.  It was pretty abstract and it came on in a fairly medicated daze I was existing in while laying on the couch.  There's this sense that we all of deep down of whether things are right or wrong.  You can call it intuition, or God's voice, or the mother earth spirits guidance.  There is something that we have available to us, and every now and again it shines a little light beam of understanding through onto a problem that we're facing.  (This of course usually happens after we've already gone through all of the misery and pain and frustration of the problem and are finally "ready" to get it - for whatever reason).  But it's there.  I know it's there because I've had the experience of seeing things clearly in retrospect and having them fit in and knowing (not just thinking but really KNOWING) what was/is right.  It's a cool experience to have, and I"m sure many, if not most of you, can relate to it.

So yesterday I'm half baked on my couch just making sure I don't forget to keep breathing and this physical sensation moves through me accompanied with a thought.  It has to do with the anxiety of something NOT BEING RIGHT.  Like, I'm doing something wrong, or something is happening that shouldn't, or there is some aspect of the way things are right in this moment that isn't fair or balanced or good or, well RIGHT.  And that thought, that feeling doesn't feel good.  It creates this discord within my body and I can feel this physical sensation of strain against something.  And then the thought shifts slightly and it's like my body aligns with it.  In that moment I know that the place I'm in, the sensation and the thought I'm having, and the  reality around it are only what they are.  And there's no other way they can be.  And that ball in the pit of my stomach, that tense ball, that relaxes for a minute, and I feel calm, and some of the discomfort I'm in may even fade back away a little, maybe not.  But to physically feel myself align with reality was really freakin neat!

The point of all this is that we are looking for answers to questions all the time looking looking looking.  And all the answers are already right there.  I know it's been said many times before, in many ways, by many people.  I know it's a cliche and that if it were that easy we'd all just wake up and walk around with smiles on our faces and eat tasteless nutri-paste.  And that would be so uninteresting.  But sometimes when things get desperate, or just really hard, you need a bone thrown your way.  You need a little pin prick of light to let you know that this particularly dark tunnel does in fact have an ending.

So, do I feel comfortable today?  Right now I am mildly comfortable.  Later on I will likely be writhing around on my side ready to throw up.  Maybe after that I'll sit down and have a nice meal with my family.  I don't know.  I can't know.  It is literally beyond my control.  So the next time I find myself getting worked up about how I feel, I just close my eyes and say, OK, I'll keep breathing, and see where we go from here.