Each day, we’re given many opportunities to open up or shut down. The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can’t handle whatever is happening. It’s too much. It’s gone too far. We feel bad about ourselves. There’s no way we can manipulate the situation to make ourselves come out looking good. No matter how hard we try, it just won’t work. Basically, life has just nailed us. It’s as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla. The mirror’s there; it’s showing “you”, and what you see looks bad. You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla. That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away. Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape — all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain. In fact, the rampant materialism that we see in the world stems from this moment. There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden it, so we don’t have to feel the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the situation to make us come out looking fine….pema chodron
i have been wrestling with guerrillas in the mirror, morals and ethical questions for a couple of months. There is a trail of crumbs that keep leading me down a path to a destination not known. As is often the case, I follow my instincts and encounter both comfort and the opposite. I then need to discern the temporary from the true. Once the veneer cracks. Perhaps that image, with the cracked facade, is the actual picture.
Everybody loves the things you do From the way you talk To the way you move Everybody here is watching you ‘Cause you feel like home You’re like a dream come true But if by chance you’re here alone Can I have a moment Before I go? ‘Cause I’ve been by myself all night long Hoping you’re someone I used to know You look like a movie You sound like a song My God, this reminds me Of when we were young Let me photograph you in this light In case it is the last time That we might be exactly like we were Before we realized We were sad of getting old It made us restless It was just like a movie It was just like a song I was so scared to face my fears Nobody told me that you’d be here And I swore you moved overseas That’s what you said, when you left me