Hey,
Give yourself this chance to ground and anchor in your breath,
Dropping down and in,
Inhaling exhaling.
Welcome to a hit of hope,
And this one is definitely salty.
As many of you probably know,
Karma is the idea that what goes around comes around,
And that you will ultimately reap what you sow from your actions,
Good or bad.
Because I am who I am,
A person who loves to ask questions,
I recently wondered if karma is a lot like hell.
Just one more way we humans want to see the wicked punished,
When we have no power to do so ourselves.
This thought came to me because I recently had encounters with people who hurt me deeply.
And it looks as if their lives are going swimmingly.
No karma in sight.
So I got triggered.
Then I beat myself up because I got triggered,
Because my thinking was,
I can't control what is happening with them,
But I can control what is happening inside me,
And I should fucking be over this by now.
The good news is this was all going on in my head.
No one present knew what was going on inside of me.
The bad news is,
It was all going on in my head.
And as I smiled and kept my hands in my lap,
I was fucking clinging to porcupines and battling laughing ghosts.
Now I want you to know I am fine.
Well,
Sort of,
Because you see,
These encounters brought me face to face with another spiritual concept that gets thrown around.
The idea that things keep returning to you until you've learned the lesson.
Or as I've heard it said,
What you resist persists.
Well,
Fuck that.
I mean it.
Because once again,
It feels as if the universe or the greater than or the divine is just a stupid pot stirrer.
And I want to beg why.
As with every discussion about religion and spirituality,
I once again find myself in a big stinking pile of I don't know.
I don't know if there's an energy in the universe that rewards and punishes.
Or if that language is too harsh,
I don't know if there is an energy in the universe that brings us what we need to face,
Not as punishment,
But as opportunity.
Opportunity to grow and change.
Again a part of me wants to say fuck that because I don't know about you,
But I am trying so hard to let go.
And it can take so much work.
So here's what I do now.
Life happens.
Shit happens.
Life brings joy and pain,
Moments of piercing clarity and heaps and heaps of mess.
And in that way,
We are like a home,
A dwelling place for this incredible spirit of ours.
And everything that happens to it.
There are moments when the sunlight pours in and everything is a light.
And have you ever cleaned your space and ten minutes later it's already a mess again?
We are the same way.
And we can ask why until the rabbits become nuns,
But as I've said before,
That question is crazy making.
So our only hope is to turn again to how.
How can we live?
How can we live with the bigger forces that seem to be at work and in ways that we don't understand?
The word that comes to mind is dwell.
Dwell in the light when it comes.
Be bathed in it.
When life storms,
Dwell in your strong foundations that connect you to the earth and to those around you.
You might literally sit your ass down on the ground when life gets out of control so you can try and get as grounded as you can.
And breathe and dwell.
Dwell in the fact that you are human.
Alive and oh so capable of feeling tender about all kinds of things.
Feel.
It's okay.
Let yourself feel and trust and center and dwell.
Let the porcupines and the ghosts and the storms come and go.
And let the light come and go.
And especially let the questions without answers come and go.
Dwell.
Be here.
Breathe here.
Center here.
Say yes to your breath.
Let it ground you and feed your inner fire so that you are centered,
Steady,
And ready to face whatever's next.
And let's keep practicing,
Doing whatever it takes to do our best to dwell and live Light.
