January 3 – All of our life circumstances are subject to change

Dear Friends,

In one of his talks, Gil says, “right view is the orientation, the frame of reference, the insight into the changing nature of this life of ours.”

He then gives an example, that I often notice in my own thought patterns:

I might think that I’m having a lousy day. And the concept of lousy days is an idea that I could repeat to myself and hold on to. And every time I think about the day, I think it’s lousy. So because my thinking is that way, it can seem like the day is lousy. But if I get more fine tuned, not to the global day, but to the what’s happening moment by moment, I discover that it’s not a constant lousy day. I step outside into the sun on a cool day. And it feels really pleasant for a moment or two. I look at the blue sky and it’s pleasant for a moment too. And then I go back to having a lousy time and thinking about something. If I look at them carefully, that lousy day has a lot to do with my evaluation of the day and my predictions and my fears and my remembering and the way I have critical thinking about something, maybe myself. And to see that those kinds of thoughts are also coming and going and changing all the time.

Eightfold Path: Right View (2 of 3), October 29, 2020
https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12338

We do that to our days, and to ourselves and each other, as Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer describes so well in this poem:

Never the Same

Sometimes a person wakes
believing they are a storm.
It’s hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That’s the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is
to stumble into the trough
of the unknown, marvel how
trough becomes wings becomes
faith becomes math. Let me trust
uncertainty is a sacred path.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, March 22, 2023
https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2023/03/22/never-the-same/

The invitation today is to become attuned to the changing nature of life, and notice times we might struggle against change, and times we experience ease, even just a little bit, even in the midst of change. Can you “trust uncertainty is a sacred path”?

With good wishes,
Andrea