Everything is transitory

A precept that works hand-in-hand with the recovery movement’s one day at a time is the realisation that for things to change, I’ve got to change; for things to get better, I have to become better.

Horace writes:

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul, you postpone care until next year?

I’ve decided to really focus on simplifying my mindset. It seems to me that much of what I experience as complication begins in my mind — subtly hanging-on to small circumstances, discomforts and interactions — allowing circumstance and situation to become the central, creative factor in my experience, rather than taking back that power myself.

The people I have to deal with every day are not going to become less passive-aggressive. The resentment that I experience from folks who have not had the benefit of my education, life-experience or basic common sense, when I respond to what they say, believe and do will not go away. I have no control over the backward mentality, the overall stupidity or the overwhelming neoconservatism of the region.

But I have creative control, power and influence over how I allow those circumstances and situations to affect me.

Everything is transitory. Discomfort doesn’t last forever. Thoreau challenges us to “learn to reawaken, and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”

Namasté

khenpo gurudas sunyatananda

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Drawing on the essential teachings of the great spiritual teachers, philosophers and freethinkers throughout time, Khenpo Gurudas Śunyatananda (retired Archbishop Francis-Maria Salvato, O.C.) has been regarded as a provocative, revolutionary “voice of reason” within the field of religion and spirituality, since 1983. Having the distinction of being one of the few openly non-theistic, openly-gay and post-denominational thinkers ever to serve as Bishop-Exarch and spiritual leader of the autocephalic Eastern Catholic Franciscans in North America, Gurudas is the author of more than 600 articles, eight books and currently serves as the spiritual advisor for a non-theistic, intentional spiritual community, The Spiritus Project. He can be reached at:http://dharmadudeunplugged.com

Copyright ©2011, Khenpo Gurudas Sunyatananda (The Most Reverend Dr. F. Francis-Maria G. Salvato, M.Sc., O.C.). All rights reserved. This material may be reproduced, blogged, quoted or distributed, provided the entire copyright including contact information remain intact. It may NOT be altered in any way, without express written permission.”