Scarcely A Ripple

Okay, let's start over.  Sometimes when I go to write an entry here, I get midway through it and I realize it doesn't make a lot of sense or it doesn't serve any purpose.  At that point, I'll often stop myself and start over.

As we go through our lives and listen to our own self-talk, we can become aware of the things that are going on in our minds. Sometimes I find that I have amazingly negative self-talk. I was telling T.R. the other day that sometimes, in the morning, if I happen to struggle to get my contact lens in, I can find myself swearing at the contact lens.  That is pretty pointless behavior.  They are inanimate pieces of plastic.  It's not like they are plotting again me overnight, lying in the case, and the right one says to the left one "Okay, no matter what he does tomorrow, you cling to his finger as tightly as you can, we'll see how many different profanities we can get him to swear!".

So much of our difficulties in life come from those times when our expectations don't line up with the world that unfolds.  We expect the contact lens to go in easily.  They don't.  We swear. Insert pretty much any subject you want in the place of contact lens.  When that happens to me, I need to pull myself carefully into the moment and realign my expectations with the world that unfolds.  That is not always an easy thing to do.  So, today, as I move through the day, I am going to try and be authentically in the moment and not let my expectations get away from me.

It's move of a question of making sure my expectations line up with the world that unfolds - taking those small adjusting movements that pull the world as I want it into alignment with the world that is. The world that is simply is. It is not going to adjust to meet me.  It is simply going to be what it is.  The adjustment has to happen on my part.  So, I think that will be the theme of my day - adjustment - adjust and see if the worlds will line up and I can move through them with scarcely a ripple.  Wish me luck.

Aren't We All Amazing Creatures

I enjoyed my little break from routine yesterday and I thought I would repeat it again today.  I came into the office early this morning so I could get a jump on that day - mornings tend to be the most productive time for me.  By the time I get later into the day I am often tired and irritable and that makes productive work difficult until later in the day.  The constant stream of interruptions from the ordinary course of business makes any measured approach to the day very difficult. I often wonder how much other people have to deal with the interruptions as well. I know they are common in my division, but I wonder if other divisions do a better job of controlling them.  It may simply be a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence.

My thoughts this morning are flowing around two things - expectations and control. They are both deeply intertwined. Control is one of the primary methods we use to try and insure that our expectations are fulfilled.  We want certain things to happen, usually based on our own needs, however base or noble we perceive them.  We then reach out and attempt to influence the course of events, attempt to drive them toward our expected outcomes. Often, we attempt to drive them there by command, by coercion, by the judicious application of force. Yet, thousands of years of observational experience, distilled and passed down to us as the wisdom of the world, tell us that force only works in the crudest sense.

I tend to be a person who divides things into two parts - yes and no, good and bad, creative and destructive.  I think the middle ground between these poles is pretty small - sometimes it is a razor blade upon which we are trying to juggle a world view. I think that, when we do not have an accurate perception of circumstances, when our perception is strong influenced by Maya, it is very easy for us to slip into the land of unmet expectations and all of the things that come with it. The better we perceive what is real, the more likely our expectations are going to align with what is real. It would then seem to follow that if we want our expectations to be met, we would have a higher chance of success if we aligned them with what is real.  Then, if we use the real to influence the real, we have a better chance at increasing the probabilities of success.

It is definitely a brain tickler to be spinning around inside my head today.

On other fronts, T.R. is back from Charleston and they are settling in for Christmas.  I was able to spend some quality time with her last night that I very much enjoyed.  My nephew was hoping to be discharged from the hospital today, so my parents drove up from the ranch, but there may have been a wrinkle thrown into the middle of that. Last night my nephew had rather severe stomach pains, so this morning they had run him through x-ray and then shot him up with morphine. Who knows what the outcome of that all is going to be. It is in part the events surrounding my nephew that have me contemplating issues of expectation and control.  Various people involved in the process have various expectations and wanted outcomes and yet, with the exception of the actions they take as individuals, there is very little they can do to control the process.

To me, when you are faced with this kind of circumstance, the question becomes - what are you willing to do to influence the outcome toward your expectation.  If the most you are willing to do is express your opinion and hope other people do the things you want them to do, then you have a relatively small chance of success.  The deeper you get into the reality, the closer you come to perceiving reality, the more likely you are to be able to influence the outcome. In the arena of expectations, victory goes to the person who is most willing to get deeply, deeply involved in the reality of the situation.  That involvement often comes with a very high cost in term of surrendering your own personal set of illusions to fully embrace reality.  Maya disapproves. So we attempt to control the unreal (reality as we would like it to be) with the unreal (actions that are not aligned with that which is real) and crash into the world of unmet expectations.

Aren’t well all amazing creatures?