Cleansing

 I have been pretty stressed the last several days. Job search and the Ukraine war. I have been getting through a lot and doing a lot of good work, I just feel emotionally off center. Like I haven't been able to find my happy place. I feel a lot of pressure right now coming in from the world and also coming out from within me. It can be pretty overwhelming. When I am not unbalanced it makes it harder to be wise. When I am scared, I want to react compulsively to circumstances. This is opposite I believe of what is wise to do. Here, I think it is better to still ourselves, than to generate more movement. The latter seems to get us more unbalanced, making things more chaotic and further outside of our control. It times like these, it seems the most difficult to just calm down and let things flow. Our instincts rise up very strongly here and overwhelm our senses. Let go and let flow. I think if we let go carefully enough, we can let go of compulsion and rest in readiness. I think the best position is one of non-attachment, having a still mind. One not fixated on any particular outcome. In this stillness I believe our strength is free to pool. When we cling, we restrict the flow of our strength and our ability to respond effectively to the situation. Forcing stillness clearly will not work, I think stillness has to naturally arise on its own accord. It does, when realization is deep enough. It is like a creek in the wilderness that belongs to no one. I think this is the dao. I believe all things are the dao, from our human perspectives we are separate from the dao, our lives are muddied, and need improvement. If we step back from our limited perspectives, we see that our individual experiences that appear narrow to us are simply the spray of water shooting off rocks beneath a waterfall. Noisy, all over the place, but still water. We think our thoughts are our thoughts and our lives our lives, belonging solely to us and divided by sharp peaks from everything else. The Earth is the land on one side of the mountain, the land on the other, and the mountain in-between. I think each thought is the Earth thinking and the Earth moving. Water splashing beneath a waterfall. Each person is the Earth being a human being. I don't think there is any difference between anything. I think movement is no movement anywhere. I do not think we are movement, I think we are no movement. I think this is the dao. I think our human experience moment to moment is Earthly landscapes appearing in thin air. Simply arising here. Jagged peaks, ravines, wide plains and grassland, blue skies. Earth appearing within us. Earth appearing here. I think when we think these are problems, these are my problems, he is such and such, she is so and so we get stuck. When we see that all our feelings and experiences are rocks and stones and trees, we can see that they are standing as they are and they don't need our help. We don't need to hold onto them to make sure their ok. They are, they are simply there, here. I think if we allow these mountains to be, despite their jaggedness we don't have to cling to them and we can flow down the river without drowning. It seems it takes drowning to see this though, and this is simply how things are.