True

 Someone suggested that if you have trouble with faith or belief in some god, why not just pray to what is true.  If the atheist is correct, than so be it.  You are not really sure since you are praying to “Truth.” If the believer in whatever is correct than so be it, but you don’t even need to join up with any religion.  You just pray to Truth. You don’t need to know what is or is not.  Why for do this?  Well, for one thing, it gets you out of yourself.  If you are not thinking about you and your problems, you have a chance for a connection with the world around you.  If your response to this outside world suggests you be of service, be helpful, kind, accepting, considerate, then that is a change, no?  You changed.  Where did that come from?  Not to worry.  Enjoy the ride.  

In The Moment

 Manny people are able to “enjoy” a drink of alcohol.  They savor the moment, the taste, the feeling, such as when drinking wine at a meal.  Alcohol can help them also to relax, which can keep them in the moment.  An alcoholic does not so much enjoy the drink in the moment.  After a few sips, they are thinking mostly about the next drink.  An alcoholic drinks with “future-mind.”  Until they run out of future, and present and are dead.  

Escape

 Some people use things like alcohol, drugs, food and other stuff to escape a feeling or a situation.  “I don’t like this feeling or this situation, so I will escape it by altering my insides while not physically going anywhere.”  For me, I would rather recognize what I am feeling, look closely at a situation I am in, and learn from the discomfort.  Often the discomfort is about some shortcoming in me and not the outsides at all.   I can grow if I can stay in touch with my insides.  For instance, I make a judgment about a person that has little to do with the person and a lot to do with something in me that needs attention.  In the past, escape for me meant living in adolescence, not growth.  

The Candle

 When a candle is lit most people look at the light and not so much the candle.  The light shines out to distill the darkness.  The spiritual life is learning to look and listen in a new way.  I tend to look more at the candle, to pay attention to the dark, to what does not seem to move.  the candle is the source of energy for the light.  No candle?  No light.  The light flickers and attracts in the dark.  The candle is still, and hardly noticed.  Like God.  A lot of spiritual writing says to be still and listen.  

The Net

 We use nets to capture butterflies because we cannot capture them in our hand.  They are too elusive, and are made not to be captured.  The soul is like the butterfly.  It is not meant to be captured by anyone else.  So we use nets.  These are our judgments and labels we give people to capture them, hold them, at least to our way of thinking.  This is not love.  If you loved the butterfly you would let it fly.  Not pin it to something.  Religions try to capture the soul, like a net.  But we don’t have to stay in the net unless we prefer to be captured rather than to be free.  A lot of people want the safety of net and not the freedom of discovery.  In meditation I try to free my soul from my mind, my judgments and labels of myself or the labels of others that I too readily accepted in order to fit in.  Fitting in can be a form of being pinned down.  Fly.  

Longing

 When I was young, with good health, and a sense of future, I often longed for things that were just beyond my reach at the moment.  Whatever I had was simply not enough.  Boredom could become front and center.  Escape from the moment, or plan a big event to look forward to.  But now that I am older, I am happy to be able to take a walk without pain in one place or another of my body.  When younger, a walk?  So boring.  When younger I did not so much enjoy what I had but what I had not, even if I could not name this absence or lack.  Now, I try to enjoy what I have because it could be taken from me in an instant.  When young I had too much time to fill up.  Now, I enjoy the gift of time that I have.  Longing often comes from an absence of imagination and gratitude.

The Door

 I used to look for happiness outside of myself.  If that person or that situation or work would change to my preference/wants/desires, then I would be happy.  I would look for happiness in another person, like falling in love.  Or look for the right job or the right place to live.  If only my team would win then I would be happy.  All outside stuff and quite beyond my control.  But as Kierkegaard said, “The door to happiness opens to the inside.”  Maybe that is why I am at peace here in this monastery with no TV, radio, newspaper, cell phone service, and narrow internet band.  All outside stuff.  I awake each morning, in the middle of your night, to open the door to the inside of myself.