“Always be returning to Zero. It is a wonderful place. It is clean and fresh, with the ability to act in response to life without having old built up responses controlling us.”
Continuously getting back to Zero is SO important.
Opinions and attitudes build up without us noticing them, and suddenly we find ourselves reacting to people or situations in a negative way.
This is very normal. The older we get, the more fixed our opinions and attitudes are about things. OF course, we feel we have the right to do this, because “Life has taught me so much”….. haha.
Regardless of how we come to notice them, they need to be reminders to return to zero.
We have powerful self-defensive modes, and some times we need to pay attention to them… like a spidey sense. Our survival instincts are there for a reason….. but when they cause us to act automatically to things, we need to push the button on our self-cleaning oven, and get back to clean mode.
But, like my 6th grade teacher, Miss Bell, taught me way back when,
“I start every day fresh without carrying the last days irritations”
Lucky she did that, because we had some serious actors there in King Edward School…. the wrong side of the tracks, back in those days.
We came back to school one Monday morning, to find the ink bottles smashed on the blackboard….. and spent the day in “art class” drawing a picture of the mess some of those “studying to be criminals” kids had done.
In the cloak room, the leather strap was used with great energy that day.
But I digress.
If we want to not be controlled by built up opinions and attitudes, we must do “house cleaning” of our mind on a regular basis.
I try to do this every time I notice an attitude that pops up….. my little “what’s up with that” friend that taps me on the shoulder.
Again, a self inquiry process asks the relevant questions of the attitude, and invariably, the freshness of Zero returns.
Always be returning to Zero. It is a wonderful place. It is clean and fresh, with the ability to act in response to life without having old built up responses controlling us.
Reality is Dharma 