We are back home after having
taken a short trip to North Carolina. I had been asked to make a brief
presentation followed by a book signing. The trip also allowed us to visit a
dear friend.
It was a great trip: beautiful
weather, great food, and super catch-up visits. But it was good to be home. I
love my mattress and I slept like a baby the first night back. I like my
familiar routines – from waking up to the coffee my electronic coffee-fairies
make to the wildlife sights off the deck I witness as I have my first cup and
take some puffs on my pipe. My body and its functioning seem to respond to these
comfortable routines as well.
Catching up on the mail included
perusing my favorite magazine, BBC’s Focus
– Science and Technology. It is a replacement subscription for the initial
BBC publication, Knowledge, which is
no longer published. The magazine has a Question & Answer section, where
readers write in and experts provide answers. It’s one of my favorite sections.
In this latest issue, a reader
had written: Why do we get bored? An expert provided the following answer: “Like hunger, thirst and loneliness, boredom
is a negative feeling that drives us to change our behaviour. Natural selection
has favoured individuals with the capacity to feel bored because they are more
likely to discover or create things that improve their survival chances, or to
look for a new partner and so spread their genes more widely. Contentment leads
to complacency, and that’s a dangerous evolutionary strategy.” [Focus,
June 2013, p. 65]
Contentment leads to complacency
and that can be dangerous. What a thought-provoking statement for me!
Here I was relishing getting
back to my habitual routines. Do my routines foster contentment?
Complacency? I think they might. I need
to look at that.
I do remember getting sober and
reaching plateaus, where it felt like my recent inward growth was getting
stagnant. Nothing seemed to be happening. It worried me. I was gently reminded:
“This too shall pass.”
Then there were those times when
it felt like every day was bringing me another lesson to be learned and I would
complain, hoping for some peace and quiet. I was gently reminded: “This too
shall pass.”
Perhaps I get bored with
contentment as well as excitement. Perhaps I need variety. Sameness grinds down
my spirit – whether it’s an exciting or mundane sameness. I’ll also have to
think about that.
This weekend my wife received
the following from a good friend and subscriber: It is an excerpt from The
Places That Scare You (A Guide to
Fearlessness in Difficult Times) by Pema Chodron:
“Confess your hidden
faults.
Approach what you
find repulsive.
Help those you think
you cannot help.
Anything you are
attached to, let it go.
Go
to places that scare you.”
(Advice
from her teacher – the Tibetan Yogini, Machik Labdron)
“…Live your life as an
experiment. At the end of the activity, whether we feel we have succeeded or
failed in our intention, we seal the act by thinking of others, of those who
are succeeding or failing all over the world. We wish that anything we learned
in our experiment could also benefit them. In this spirit, I offer this guide….
May it help move us toward the places that scare us. May it inform our lives
and help us to die with no regrets.”
For some reason I am very
contemplative this weekend. All these thoughts about complacency, contentment,
facing fears, living as if it’s an experiment have stirred up something – but I
don’t know what or why it is.
ACIM tells me I don’t need to
know what or why. It simply is. It is Now. It is who and where I am at this
moment. I don’t need to judge this as good/bad, helpful/destructive,
fruitless/productive. I just need to
observe and let it be…
Today.
Writing.
Thinking on paper.
Sharing myself with you.
Although these messages are
mostly for me, thanks for listening. As always – feel free to forward this
message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual
journey.
Don.
#3 June, 2013
Copyright, 2013
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