The Grandness

It struck me today. It's not about the stress. Stress is good. The world is an endless pressure cooker (was it Buddha who said that?), and our job is not to escape (because there is no escape) but to become delicious.

It's trying to avoid the stress that makes us feel shitty.

Seems like a tissue-box, daily calendar type of insight, but it feels huge to me today. Face the stress. The stress is good. The stress is your engagement; the discomfort is awesome. Love it; live it. Don't leave it.

This certainly turns my world around. Comfort has largely been my goal. I'm so happy today that I have such things to get excited about, to make me grow. They also help me take pause. I had a great time at the river. I felt alive and connected to things. I felt that brushing my teeth just now. The richness of simply pausing and being aware of the objects around me and the way my feelings wrap confused tendrils around everything. It's stupid and funny and beautiful, how endlessly vulnerable I am.

 I owe at least part of this to my early morning ice showers - inspired by Julien Smith. Really, this seems to be the symbol that finally works for me. It's a kind of ritual, a kind of life hack that brings into focus my relationship with comfort, disrupts it and wakes me up. And it's directly, unavoidably physical. I think that's probably most of it. I cannot be in my head. And I was getting to think I was terminally in my head.

It's more effective at doing the things I expect from zazen (but which zazen actually isn't about) than zazen is. I think that's great. It takes an unnecessary burden off my meditation practice that way.

So I get about a minute of being exceptionally awake every morning. I can count on that.

Where from here?

I still want to expunge the sponge in me; to be more of a producer, a proprietor, a sharer and a giver. These things are important. Being spiritually pure and abstractly excellent are not.

The awakening and electricity of the early morning ice-cold shower are meaningless without the nakedness, the opening, the closeness. Those two things go together: the jolt and the open heart. One cannot exist without the other.

I accept this adventure.

Dream well, all.