Slough

It’s either love or something else. If it’s something else, let it go.

Getting naked

To my ear, the phrase “Lest we forget” has a chiding, slightly ominous ring to it, echoing George Santayana’s platitude that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. In fact, the opposite is true. Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Look at the oldest cultures on the planet, how they fight with themselves and each other. And with such ferocity! In the spiritual sense, we renew ourselves by forgetting ourselves. This happens every night in the state of deep sleep. If it didn’t, we’d go mad. And we do it consciously via meditation, wordless prayer, or total surrender to what is. We even do it just before we take a bath. By ridding ourselves of convention. By getting naked.

Man offended

Surely the world has never not been disturbed, riven and violent. Even our corporeal selves are full of cellular antagonisms and warring entities. Why are we everyday freshly offended by this immutable fact?

Swift and sudden

We do not change ourselves by adding to ourselves. More money? More possessions? More experiences? Accumulation prevents what we imagine it facilitates. Real change is radical subtraction, a letting go, swift and sudden.

Desire

One by one, dump your desires. Yes, all of them. Start small—say, with a desire for potato chips—and then move up from there, even as far as sugar and sex and possessions. After a couple of successful relinquishments, you’ll find it gets easier and easier to let go of these mind-made confinements. And even, strange to say, a bit thrilling. Because ultimately you arrive at your heart’s desire, the one that necessitated the sweeping away of all the others.