balance

The weeks keep slipping by.  Leaves turn and fall.  My driveway is a carpet of wet yellow. 

With each 24 hours that passes, I note little markers of spiritual growth as well as glimpses that remind me I ain't seen nothin' yet.

The last several days have been a circuitous lesson in balance.  I tend to veer off easily into the deep end, making mayhem out of mole hills and complicating the simple.  Part of my inherent craziness is believing things are more difficult than they really are--insisting on commanding center stage in an operatic drama of my own creation, which no one else is paying any attention to...

I recently read a definition that says humility is about being "right sized," about "getting real."  Humility is responding honestly and openly to life without exagerrating or diminshing our role and importance in the grand scheme of things.  For a theater-trained Leo who loves to gild and embelish, this is a daunting premise... 

Nevertheless, I see how easy it is for me to lose my balance, to mistake the glitter for gold, the sparkle for diamonds, and then become visciously critical when I find I'm mistaken.

What's important for me these days is to maintain an attitude of acceptance and gratitude.  This helps me see how distorted and selfish my approach to the world tends to be.  And I'm not trying to be particularly beatific in this observation.  It's just I see how much suffering I cause myself when I shut myself up in my head alone with my thoughts.  I separate myself from life.  I don't reach out to the people I care about.  I shut down at the base level of my humanity.

By maintaining a semblance of balance, by doggedly returning to my center and affirming my attention to dwell in the sweet spot--plugged into the Source of my higher power--I can live more or less in a serene state.  I still get sidetracked by fantasies of revenge and delusions of grandeur, but more and more, it's like hopping up-and-down with a net after butterflies rather than running with wild dogs.

Balance for me is tied up in "the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."  Balance for me comes from remembering I am not my own higher power.

Passion, beauty, and love, folks--24 hours at a time...