When I was young, I chafed at “discipline”, yet I recognized that it was something which played a positive part in my life when I allowed it. But there was also a negative reaction, a pushing back …. always trying to kick in. It seems in the end, it was a force, almost like inertia which worked to hold everything from moving….. a holding down…. a holding in place …… which tried continually to hold life from moving in neither a good direction nor a bad one. Often, I lived with feelings of melancholy, sensing that I was being tossed about by this sea of turmoil…. out of control. Waxing poetic……
Looking back, it seems, that those who can learn how to “live” and “move” in the midst of the inertia force, are able to have more happy and productive lives. But we know quite certainly, that what we observe from the outside of other folks lives, is often simply a face being put on….. I dare say, we are all equal, in that we shift from the “stuck” to the “flowing” mode of these two forces and back again in an alternating current…… alternating between feeling good about ourselves and feeling bad.
It also seems obvious, that regardless of beliefs, a person can be pulled from one side to the other with a flick of the switch of life.
So ultimately, there seems to be a flowing mode, where we are able to move in a “positive” direction, and a stuck mode, where we are either stuck, or moving in a “negative” direction. As well, we find there is no controlling this ebb and flow.
Perhaps the ancient art of astrology was born from this wisdom of ebb and flow….. that, like the moon and planets act on the ocean, life is a force upon the ocean of our life, creating an ebb and flow and then ebb followed by another flow.
We all have our pride of our successes or things accomplished, and our sense of failures or guilt about things not accomplished. I suspect there is no one alive who only has one or the other. It seems that the older we get, the more obvious this reality is…. and the more we see how life is impacting us, with a wider perspective…. becomes a form of wisdom.
But does this wisdom free us? Do we learn how to “move within the inertia” like magicians? Or do we simply give up and say “I don’t care anymore” ?
The older I get, the more folks issues seem to be similar. Whether a person believes that each individual is really just one entity living myriad lives, or whether we are beings created by an over controlling parent God, we all seem to suffer from similar issues.
For many years, I thought if I could just “see the light”, I could flip the switch and have a more positive life …… And, because I ask a lot of questions, I found that most folks were saying the same thing….. they included my teachers, professors, ministers and priests, politicians, “pedestal leaders”……. everyone was suffering from the same malaise.
No matter what road one travels, the experience seems to be the same.
It is because of this fact, that I am writing down what seems to be the “dharma” of this life system …. one which has been written about so many times in the past, and will continue to be written about until the universe passes away, and gets recycled……
“Life is an ocean of the ebb and flow of bliss and suffering.”
So….. what can be done?
To be continued…………………
Reality is Dharma 